My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
An apparent paradox that means our younger selves engender (“father”) our older selves. Compare the Jesuit motto “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” 
 The belief that childhood determines the course of our adult lives was endorsed by Freud and persists among parents who fight to send their children to the best private preschools. It also inspired  Michael Apted’s  Up  Series documentaries . 
 
 Wordsworth later used the last three lines of this poem as a self-quoting epigraph to his  “Immortality Ode.”
My Heart Leaps Up