The Rainbow (A Fragment.)
My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky;So was it when my life began,So is it now I am a man,So be it when I shall grow old,Or let me die!The child is father of the man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Rainbow (A Fragment.) is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Every Child Should Know The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library, Project Gutenberg ebook #16436; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Mary E. Burt, The Rainbow (A Fragment.), in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/the-rainbow-a-fragment.html, id L25179.
Form and metre
The Rainbow (A Fragment.) is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABCCABCB- beholdA · skyB · beganC · manC · oldA · dieB · manC · beB · piety
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| My heart leaps up when I behold | 8 | ······˘/ |
| A rainbow in the sky; | 6 | ·/···· |
| So was it when my life began, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| So is it now I am a man, | 8 | ········ |
| So be it when I shall grow old, | 8 | ········ |
| Or let me die! | 4 | ···· |
| The child is father of the man; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And I could wish my days to be | 8 | ········ |
| Bound each to each by natural piety. | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.