Love Calls Us to the Things
of This World
Richard Wilbur’s poem ‘‘Love Calls Us to the
Things of This World’’ is one of the most fre-
quently anthologized poems in the English lan-
guage. The title refers to a passage from St.
Augustine’sConfessions, written in the fourth
century, in which the saint laments that the beau-
tiful things of the world have created distance
between him and God. St. Augustine is respond-
ing to the gospel of St. John, who advises
humans to ‘‘Love not the world, neither the
things that are in the world.’’ In this poem, Wil-
bur presents a person waking up in the morning
and looking outside at laundry that has just been
hung on the clothesline and imaging, in a half-
aware slumber, that the clothes and sheets hung
there are moved by angels, not the wind. He
examines the balance between the material
world and the spiritual world. This poem’s cen-
tral image, of laundry waving on a line, opens up
the poem to issues of existence, morality and
religion.
Since its first publication in Wilbur’s 1956
collectionThings of This World,thispoemhas
been considered a masterful achievement for its
clear style, its authorial control of form and sym-
bol as well as its clarity of meaning. Most
recently, the poem has become available with all
of Wilbur’s most significant works in his Pulitzer
Prize-winning 1988 collectionNew and Collected
Poems.
157RICHARD WILBUR
1956