Villanelle

I found in "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke the message to savor every precious moment of your life and not to fear death itself. I know in class we talked about the poem referring to transcendence, but I'm going to allude it to death. In the poem, Roethke repeats constantly "I wake to sleep." This reminded me of the Bible story when Jesus told a couple that their daughter had not died, but was merely sleeping in death. I think that Roethke meant that we need to wake up everyday in order to achieve all the goals we have for ourselves so that when the time comes we can sleep peacefully. The repetition of the phrase throughout the villanelle makes me think that he organized it to motivate us and remind us that this is what we should live for.
The villanelle form helps organize the poem so that the first section is about knowing that death is approaching. He feels it approaching, but he cannot fear it because it's fate. The second stanza brings to mind the idea of actions being louder than words. Except Roethke puts it into the idea of touch. "We think by feeling" means that we only understand or know something through experience - by touching and sensing the moment. The third stanza says to me that we need to not only savor our life, but also that of the Ground (the Earth) and treat it as sacred. The fourth stanza provides a message to pursue knowledge (climb the stairwell to enlightenment). The fifth stanza sounds like decomposition to me. He tells us again to enjoy the life we are living now before we are buried into the ground and nature takes over. The last stanza says to me that death is near again. It is a final call-to-action in a way.