"Somewhere under the rainbow,
Way down low
There's a land that I heard of
Once on the radio."
When William Wordsworth spoke of "natural piety," he meant the reverent sensibilities with which men are born, as opposed to the artificial manias with which they are throughout their lives infected, inflamed, and then bored. Like all Romantics, Wordsworth believed that natural piety is pure in a child and then perverted by false education as the child matures. Thus "natural piety" in an adult includes piety towards the person he was as a child, which is what Wordsworth means by the line "the Child is father of the man." For those who do not recognize these allusions, here is Wordsworth's "Rainbow" (1802).
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