Quotes from work
The Waking

Theodore Roethke

"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.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

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.

“I take this cadence from a man named Yeats:
I take it and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.
Yes, I was dancing mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

"Four for Sir John Davies," ll. 19-24
The Waking (1953)

“Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

The Waking (1953), The Waking

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

Theodore Roethke The Waking

"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.

“Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

The Waking (1953), The Waking