“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.”

Theodore Roethke
Wisdom Wisdom

Explore This Quote Further

Quote by Theodore Roethke: “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel… - Image 1

Similar quotes

“The WakingI 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 doTo 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's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, my shadow pinned against a sweating wall, that place among the rocks--is it a cave, or winding path? The edge is what I have.”


“I learned not to fear infinity,The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,The wheel turning away from itself,The sprawl of the wave,The on-coming water.”


“In a dark time, the eye begins to see,I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;I hear my echo in the echoing wood--A lord of nature weeping to a tree.I live between the heron and the wren,Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.What's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.That place among the rocks--is it a cave,Or winding path? The edge is what I have.A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,And in broad day the midnight comes again!A man goes far to find out what he is--Death of the self in a long, tearless night,All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.The mind enters itself, and God the mind,And one is One, free in the tearing wind.”


“Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?”


“By daily dying, I have come to be.”