Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) was born in Saginaw, Michigan. His early years spent in the family greenhouse business brought him close to nature and to his father, who died suddenly when Roethke was fifteen, a loss that looms large in his poem “My Papa’s Waltz.” After graduating from the University of Michigan, he did brief stints at law school and at Harvard University before the Great Depression compelled him to find work teaching at Lafayette College. He continued to teach throughout his life. Roethke first became popular after favorable reviews for Open House in 1941. He then won numerous prizes for his work throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including National Book Awards for both Words for the Wind (1957) and The Far Field (1964). The meeting of the mystical and the natural is at the center of his work—a meeting that fascinated such earlier poets as Blake and Wordsworth, both of whom were strong influences on Roethke’s poetry.

The Waking

“The Waking” was published in Roethke’s collection The Waking: Poems 1933–1953, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

5

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

10

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.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

15

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

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.

(1953)