Love Calls Us to the Things of This World Poem Analysis

📌Category: Poems
📌Words: 967
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 21 January 2022

“Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole. And casting out myself, become a soul”. This is said by a famous American poet, Richard Wilbur, who focuses heavily on the distinction between reality and spirituality. Wilbur wrote one of his poems, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”, in 1956 and that was around when he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and National Book Award for Poetry. This poem is a perfect example of how the spiritual world correlates with the material world. Several lines from this poem are also related to Wilbur’s real life. In general, the poem is written in blank verse which is not rhymed but does have meters. Through his use of alliteration and imagery, Wilbur explains the connection between spirituality and reality, and the importance of imagination in the poem “Love Calls Us to the Thing of This World”.

First of all, alliteration is used in this poem and Wilbur utilizes some words that are rarely used in daily life to create some musical and harmonious characteristics. In the first stanza, he opens with the line, “The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, / And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul” (Wilbur, line 1-2). There are a lot of repeated sounds of “s” and these sounds give readers a feeling of awakening. The first stanza presents that when a person wakes up in the morning, his soul is the first to have consciousness and get to see nature. Similarly, Wilbur writes, “Outside the open window /The morning air is all awash with angels” (line 5-6). All those “a” sounds give readers a distinct impression of the poem because this stanza is highly related to real-life—the body is energized by the soul just like how the day is energized by the sun—which Wilbur elaborates on this rising process. Moreover, in the third stanza, Wilbur describes: 

The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving 

And staying like white water; and now of a sudden 

They swoon down into so rapt a quiet 

That nobody seems to be there. (line 13-16)

In this stanza, Wilbur is using the “s” sounds again to make a contradiction since the angels are “flying in place” in the third stanza instead of “rising together” in the second stanza (line 9); alliteration plays an important role where the “s” sound creates the softness to highlight the angels’ water-like personality. When people read through this stanza, they will have relief of their souls because such a quiet tone is used in the third stanza. There are other alliterations in this poem, such as, “Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves; Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone” (line 30-31). The recurring “l” sounds deliver a sense of cleanliness and tranquility and the quietness is interfered with by the human world which can be observed through the phrase “ruddy gallows”. Overall, Wilbur avails himself of alliteration to enhance the connection between the soul and the human itself. 

Besides the use of alliteration, Wilbur takes advantage of imagery in this poem to provide readers a feeling of how Wilbur himself thinks about the images when writing the poem. In the second stanza, Wilbur describes that the angels are in “deep joy of their impersonal breathing” (line 11). Wilbur is proving that those angels are real by stating “Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses, / Some are in smocks” (line 7-8). These images of angels make this stanza peaceful and joyful. The word “impersonal” implies that there is no association with humans, but rather there is more associated with the spirit as Wilbur describes the image of the angels “rising together in calm swells” (line 9); this line fits perfectly with the peaceful tone of this stanza. In addition, in the fourth stanza, Wilbur remarks, “‘Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry, / Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam / And clear dances done in the sight of heaven’” (line 21-23). In these lines, Wilbur mentions clothing that keeps in touch with the blouses and smocks in the second stanza. These clothes give readers a sense that the presence of human beings is detrimental to the soul as well as the spiritual world as Wilbur brings up that “the soul shrinks” and “they cried” before. Finally, in the last stanza, Wilbur ends by saying: 

Yet, as the sun acknowledges 

With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors, 

The soul descends once more in bitter love 

To accept the waking body” (line 24-27)

As the sun lights up the real world with hunks and colors, the body starts to wake and the soul has to accept the body as usual. On top of that, “the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating / O dark habits, / keeping their difficult balance” also stands out because it is interesting how heavy things can walk freely on a floating surface. It is also important to know that the nuns can be metaphorically imagined as angels which have been discussed throughout the entire poem. Wilbur is stating the fact that although the soul accepts the real world, they have to accept the body or the spirit to keep everything on track. The use of imagery conveys the importance of imagination as it aids in emotional development; readers can see, hear and feel what the writer is achieving.

Both imagery and alliteration give readers an understanding of how spirituality and reality rely on each other; they have to accept each other to keep everything in balance although it might be difficult for each of them. Looking back at the first line of this essay when Wilbur comments, “Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole. And casting out myself, become a soul,” the quote makes people aware of the importance of creation and imagination as what the angels do every day in this poem. All of the thoughts come from deep inside of the soul. Just like the man this poem is describing, he is asleep for most of the time and it serves as a foreshadowing device that insinuates that spirituality is yet to be explored.

Work Cited 

Wilbur, Richard. “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.” Poetry Foundation, Published in 1957. Accessed 26 September 2021. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43048/love-calls-us-to-the-things-of-this-world

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