Poetry for Students, Volume 29

some of the nun’s dignity, judging her to be too
honored for her spiritualism. Although Wilbur
does emphasize the nun’s physical nature by
pointing out the darkness and heaviness of her
clothing, he also calls for her to be able to float,
in spite of the gravity of her presence. After
offering lightness to the criminal, he does not
go to the extreme of characterizing the nun as
lacking angelic qualities. Rather than favor one
side or another, the poem’s point is that all sides
of the social spectrum struggle equally to reach a
balance that is, admittedly, difficult.

Style

Conceit
A ‘‘conceit’’ is the word used to describe the
poetic technique of using one extended meta-
phor that serves as a touchstone for the entire
poem’s logic and sensibility. In ‘‘Love Calls Us
to the Things of This World,’’ the main conceit is
that of waking up and encountering the world
anew. This situation is not only the poem’s open-
ing situation, it is continued through to the last
stanza, adapting its significance in different
parts of the poem: waking is used to suggest
wide-eyed amazement in one place, a violent
rape in another, and a descent into bitterness in
still another. Similarly, laundry is used to remind
readers of different things throughout the poem,
from angels dancing in midair to the laborers
who work over the washtubs to the ‘‘clean linen
for the backs of thieves.’’

Imagery
Poets use imagery when they invoke an emotion
by referring to the experiences of the five senses.
In this poem, Wilbur does not tell readers what
they should think of the situation that he
presents, but instead he provides images, such
as laundry hanging on a line, steam, nuns, and
colors. When poets choose their images carefully
and place them with other poems that give them
a context, readers will understand what the
writer feels about a subject, even if ideas are
never explicitly discussed.

Alliteration
Alliteration is the use of words that begin with
the same consonant sound in close proximity to
each other, with the end result that the reader
feels, consciously or not, the cumulative effect.

Often, alliteration makes use of soft sounds, like

‘‘f’’ or ‘‘s,’’ to give the poem a quiet tone, while a

cluster of harder sounds like ‘‘k’’ or ‘‘t’’ give the

poem a machine gun-like staccato feeling.

In ‘‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This

World’’ Richard Wilbur uses alliteration freely

to enhance the poem’s musical qualities. In the

second and third lines, for instance, there are

four words starting with the letters. These, in

addition to the pronouncedssounds in the

words ‘‘astounded,’’ ‘‘bodiless,’’ and ‘‘false,’’

make this part of the poem flow by with a hushed

smoothness. The build up of the alliterative

words beginning with ‘‘s’’ is repeated in stanza

3, with ‘‘staying,’’ ‘‘sudden,’’ ‘‘swoon,’’ and

‘‘seems,’’ cumulating with the final words: ‘‘soul

shrinks.’’ This softness is reinforced in the mid-

dle of the stanza with the alliterative ‘‘white

water.’’ There are other uses of alliteration,

such as ‘‘feeling, filling’’ in line 9 and ‘‘let lovers’’

in line 28, fulfilling the same function.

Assonance

The term ‘‘assonance’’ refers to the repeated use

of vowel sounds in a work. Assonance is usually

considered to mean the sounds within words,

like when Wilbur uses ‘‘steam’’ two words away

from ‘‘clear’’ or the repetition of the ‘‘o’’ sound,

slightly different but basically the same, in

‘‘swoon down into so.’’ The definition of asso-

nance accounts for vowel sounds within words,

but that is because vowel sounds usually do

appear within words. In the first stanza of this

poem, though, Wilbur combines assonance and

alliteration, presenting a cluster of words that

start with the same vowel sound. Line 4 is broken

at the words ‘‘outside the open,’’ and line 5 ends

with ‘‘air is all awash with angels,’’ giving this

part of the poem a particularly light, airy feeling

that is appropriate for its discussion of angels.

Though assonance in the first letters of words is

rare, it fits well in a poem like this, which is

dedicated to the contrast between the hardness

of reality and the untouchable nature of the soul.

Historical Context

Metaphysical Poetry

The phrase Metaphysical Poets originally referred

to a group of poets in England in the seventeenth

century. These poets, including John Donne,

George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, Abraham

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World