My Heart Leaps Up

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1807

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Access Full Guide

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Rainbow

The rainbow has many different shades of meaning in the poem. On one level, this phenomenon symbolizes the wonder of nature in all its many beautiful manifestations. While commonplace and frequently observed, the rainbow never loses its specialness because of its iconic shape and coloring—and because its appearance is unpredictable. In the poem, the speaker holds on to the awed delight that rainbows inspired in him as a child, treasuring their similar effect on him in adulthood. The speaker’s heart “lifts up” in response to nature’s sublimity.

For Wordsworth’s contemporaries, the rainbow’s biblical meaning would also have been top of mind. In the Old Testament Book of Genesis, after wiping out all of humanity with a flood save Noah on his Ark, God creates a rainbow as a symbolic promise never to destroy the inhabitants of the Earth in this way again. The rainbow is thus connected with divine grace, safety, and the continuity of the human race—something Wordsworth evokes in the parallel constructions in Lines 3-5, which echo biblical commandments.

Continuity

The continuity of human life in past, present, and future is a leading idea in the poem. This continuity is affirmed and anticipated. The speaker does not want to experience any radical breaks or discontinuities in his life.

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By William Wordsworth

Study Guide

A Complaint

William Wordsworth

Plot Summary

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

William Wordsworth

Study Guide

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

William Wordsworth

Study Guide

Daffodils

William Wordsworth

Study Guide

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

William Wordsworth

Study Guide

London, 1802

William Wordsworth

Plot Summary

Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth, Michael Schmidt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Study Guide

Nature

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter

Study Guide