even begin to touch upon what all of this action
means until the second half.
The second half of the poem can be read as
two different styles. The most obvious one is the
style used in the sixth and final stanza. As the
conclusion of the poem, this stanza carries
the weight of announcing its moral message to
its readers, a task that it completes with logic and
clarity. As a result of the preceding meditations
on how physical and spiritual aspects interact,
condemned criminals are put on the same level
as lovers and nuns, all of them accorded the
upbeat comforts of clean linen, pure, floating
walking, and the sanctity to ‘‘go fresh and
sweet.’’ While some of the language of this stanza
can be obscure, such as the meaning of how,
exactly, the lovers are going to be ‘‘undone,’’
most of it shows a return to a level of concrete
imagery that marked the poem’s first half. One
final stylistic element that sets stanza 6 off from
the ones that precede it is the fact that it is made
from one single long quote. Even though the
poem has used a quotation before, in stanza 4,
this one is different because of its length and
because, coming at the end, it represents the
culmination of how the events of this poem
have affected the character in it. Though not a
return to the style of the first half, and certainly
far from it in subject matter, stanza 6 still has
more in common with the first three stanzas than
it does with the two that precede it.
The two remaining stanzas are the tradi-
tional ones, bridging the event that motivates
raised awareness and the heightened awareness
that ensues. It is in this part of the poem that
understanding is born, and it is a difficult birth.
Thematically, what is notable about stanzas 4
and 5 is how much darker they are than the
others. Stylistically, what is most notable is
how much they resemble each other, almost to
the point of redundancy.
The first half of the poem is mostly charac-
terized by the sense of wonderment that comes
from seeing things in a new way when the con-
scious mind is disoriented by sleep. This buoyant
feeling only fades in the third stanza, when the
angels’ speed, which could be exhilarating to
them, is described negatively as ‘‘terrible.’’ At
the end of the third stanza, as it segues into the
next phase of the poem’s inquiry, stands the
phrase ‘‘the soul shrinks’’: darker but still not
very threatening, it is a harbinger of the mood
to come, standing apart from line 15 in a neutral
zone. Nothing in the first half of the poem pre-
pares the reader for the use of the phrase ‘‘punc-
tual rape’’ to describe the mechanical regularity
of the rising sun, or the sourness of ‘‘bitter love’’
to explain the soul’s reluctance to join its body
after a night of sleep. This is more than the
resentment of someone who is not a morning
person: in using such strong wording, Wilbur
presents the basic division between mind and
body as being overtly hostile. The gentle tone
that is to follow in stanza 6 is not just the result
of someone following his observations of the
laundry moving to its logical conclusions, it is
the synthesis that comes out of a battle by two
conflicting forces.
Taking stanzas 4 and 5 as an independent
unit, the parallels between them jumps out.
Some phrases are repeated, others are mirrored
with their opposites, but all show a special bond
between these two stanzas that does not connect
them with any others. In the first line of stanza 4,
for instance, the soul does ‘‘remember,’’ and in
the first line of stanza 5 the sun does ‘‘acknowl-
edge.’’ The sun’s acknowledgement ‘‘with a
warm look’’ of the world is paralleled, in its
placement in the stanza, to its ‘‘punctual rape
of every blessed day’’ in the stanza before. In`
stanza 4, the steam is ‘‘rising,’’ while in stanza 5
the soul ‘‘descends.’’ The ‘‘clear dances done in
the sight of heaven’’ could easily be seen as an
idealization of how speaking ‘‘in a changed voice
as the man yawns and rises.’’ In all, the theme
that is explored throughout the poem, of the
similarities and differences between the real and
ideal, is magnified within the space of these two
stanzas.
Readers who look only at the subject matter
of a poem are missing much of its message,
obviously: the way the author organizes ideas
on the page is used to magnify what the author
is trying to say. Ideally, every detail should be
working to make the poem’s point. In the case of
a poem like ‘‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This
World,’’ readers can understand the main idea
easily enough from one quick reading: the
imagery is striking enough to identify the dichot-
omy (or contrast) between the physical and spi-
ritual worlds. The poem’s conclusion, regarding
the equality of all, seems reasonable enough.
These basic concepts become even clearer,
though, as one reads deeper. In this poem, the
fourth and fifth stanzas seem like they could
represent a lull in the case that Wilbur is puttingLove Calls Us to the Things of This World