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?
 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.

 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,
 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.

What attracted me to this poem first was the first line - “I wake to sleep and take my waking slow”. It seemed perfect for a dreamy lazy not-morning person :). And of course “I learn by going where I have to go”. Now every time I read this poem I find it has something new to tell me through each and every line. Besides the whole musicality of it.

— Monica

Minstrels Links

Named Poetic Forms:
Poem #904, The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina – Miller Williams
Poem #905, I will put Chaos into fourteen lines – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poem #906, To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train – Frances Cornford
Poem #907, Miss Charlotte Brown, Librarian, Goes Mad – Felix Jung
Poem #908, Haiku – Yosa Buson
Poem #909, The Limerick Packs Laughs Anatomical – Anon.

Villanelles:
Poem #38, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas
Poem #202, Missing Dates – William Empson
Poem #393, One Drunken Night – Peter Schaeffer
Poem #677, Time will say nothing but I told you so – W. H. Auden
Poem #706, It is the pain, it is the pain endures – William Empson

Theodore Roethke:
Poem #267, The Meadow Mouse