My Heart Leaps Up

“My Heart Leaps Up” occupies an interesting place in the chronology of Wordsworth’s poetry and the evolution of his vision and thought in connection with nature. Wordsworth was acutely aware that his poetry rested on the special relationship he had with nature, which nourished him personally from childhood and was the source of his creativity. In his late 20s, however, Wordsworth's relationship to nature changed. He wrote of this in one of his most famous poems, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” which appeared in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. In this poem, he recalls that when he visited the River Wye five years earlier, nature to him was “all in all.—I cannot paint what then I was. / The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion” (Wordsworth, William. “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798.” Poets.org, 1798. Lines 77-79), and rock, mountain, and wood “were then to me / An appetite, a feeling and a love” (“Lines Composed,” Lines 81-82). Things are different now, though. All those “aching joys” (“Lines Composed,” Line 86) and “dizzy raptures” (“Lines Composed,” Line 87) have vanished, replaced by a more sober and thoughtful feeling—one of awe.