"The child is father of the man"
About this Quote
A compact paradox, the line reverses lineage to suggest that the adult self is authored by the child within. It comes from Wordsworths brief lyric My Heart Leaps Up (1802), where a sudden joy at the sight of a rainbow anchors a vow: let that unforced delight that colored childhood remain into old age, or let me die. The aphorism crystallizes a Romantic conviction that the earliest impressions and habits of feeling generate the character and imagination of the grown person.
Father here means source, not authority. The child gives birth to the man by shaping sensibility, establishing patterns of attention, and training the capacity for wonder. Wordsworth called this continuity natural piety, a reverent loyalty to the rhythms of nature and to the best intuitions of youth. Far from mere nostalgia, it is an ethical demand: maintain fidelity to the original responsiveness that made life vivid and meaningful.
Across his work, especially The Prelude, he charts how childhood experiences, those spots of time, become reservoirs of moral energy and creative vision. The line also answers the disillusionment of his era. After the disappointments of political revolution, he turns to what endures: the mind in communion with nature. The rainbow embodies recurrence and renewal, a sign that what once awakened awe can do so again if the adult does not grow numb.
Modern readers hear a psychological echo: early attachments and environments profoundly shape later personality. Yet Wordsworths claim is less deterministic than aspirational. To let the child be father is to preserve openness, simplicity, and awe without lapsing into childishness. It is a program for living, an invitation to bind days each to each through attention and gratitude. If that continuity breaks, the poem suggests, something essential dies. If it holds, the adult remains newly alive to the world that first taught him to see.
Father here means source, not authority. The child gives birth to the man by shaping sensibility, establishing patterns of attention, and training the capacity for wonder. Wordsworth called this continuity natural piety, a reverent loyalty to the rhythms of nature and to the best intuitions of youth. Far from mere nostalgia, it is an ethical demand: maintain fidelity to the original responsiveness that made life vivid and meaningful.
Across his work, especially The Prelude, he charts how childhood experiences, those spots of time, become reservoirs of moral energy and creative vision. The line also answers the disillusionment of his era. After the disappointments of political revolution, he turns to what endures: the mind in communion with nature. The rainbow embodies recurrence and renewal, a sign that what once awakened awe can do so again if the adult does not grow numb.
Modern readers hear a psychological echo: early attachments and environments profoundly shape later personality. Yet Wordsworths claim is less deterministic than aspirational. To let the child be father is to preserve openness, simplicity, and awe without lapsing into childishness. It is a program for living, an invitation to bind days each to each through attention and gratitude. If that continuity breaks, the poem suggests, something essential dies. If it holds, the adult remains newly alive to the world that first taught him to see.
Quote Details
| Topic | Youth |
|---|---|
| Source | William Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up" (poem), written 1802, published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807); contains the line "The Child is father of the Man". |
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