MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD

                      --by William Wordsworth

Explain the paradox in “The Child is father of the Man.”

The paradox in the above line that is part of William Wordsworth’s poem My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold is placed in a context in which the speaker fondly speaks of his fascination to see the rainbow—or in other words to see the grandeur of nature, which he considers timeless or everlasting. Although the paradox seems evident in the line, it is not hard to see the truth that is uncontested. Drawing on how he had his fascination for the rainbow when he was a child and how the fascination still sustains at his adulthood, the speaker hopes the same to be true when he is old. It is at this point that the speaker employs the aforesaid paradox to suggest that it is, in fact, the very character of a child that determines what he must be like as a man. In other words, a man evolves or grows out of a child and shares the same early disposition. Of course, while it may be common to see the man as father of the child in biological terms, the paradox, however, inverts these roles and stresses another truth of how the child also is capable of begetting a man. To put it in the context of the speaker, since his past has begotten his present, so must his present beget his future too. In other words, the paradox is parallel in meaning to the proverb “Morning shows the day.”