Quotes from work
The Waking

"The Waking" is a poem written by Theodore Roethke in 1953 in the form of a villanelle. It is a self-reflexive poem that describes waking up from sleep. It comments on the unknowable with a contemplative tone. It also has been interpreted as comparing life to waking and death to sleeping.


“What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.”

The Waking (1953), The Waking
Source: The Collected Poems
Context: This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

“All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.”

"Four for Sir John Davies," ll. 73-78
The Waking (1953)
Context: Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
Shook with a mighty power beyond his will, —
Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.

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