Theodore Roethke and The WakingIn describing how he receives life's lessons and experiences learned, Theodore Roethke uses the repetition of two different phrases and a simple rhyme scheme to help the reader to understand his vision of how to endure life. The two phrases repeated throughout the poem are "I fall asleep and wake slowly" and "I learn by going where I need to go" [with a slight variation in the latter]. “I wake to sleep and wake slowly” appears in stanzas 1, 2, 4, and 6 and figuratively means that Roethke wakes up in the morning and learns from the experiences of the day. Unlike most people, Roethke doesn't rush through the day like he's waiting for another. He lives the day calmly and slowly to learn about life without missing anything along the way. At night he goes to sleep satisfied with the day's experiences and wakes up the next morning in the same sluggish manner. When Roethke states "I learn by going where I must go" in stanzas 1, 3, 5, and 6, he is stating that he goes anywhere and everywhere to experience everything he can. He observes rare things throughout his travels and makes mistakes along the way, but everywhere he goes he locks the experiences into his memory and repeats the cycle. The repetition of the poem's phrases sets the tone of determination and perseverance to enjoy whatever life experiences come Roethke's way. The emotion conveyed by the sentences is an exhilarating feeling as Roethke observes and appreciates even the most insignificant aspects of life, such as when "the little worm climbs a spiral staircase." The rhyme scheme initiated by the author follows the rhyme scheme ABA in the first two stanzas, CDA in the third to fifth stanzas, and ABAA in the final stanza. This particular rhyme scheme creates a comfortable flow of overt rhymes. In the first two stanzas, the rhymes are the same (ABA) as Roethke talks about living life through feeling. The rhyme scheme changes in the third through fifth stanzas as the focus of the subject shifts to how Roethke embodies his idea of ​​"experience through feeling" by sharing the specific examples of the worm and the ground. The last stanza returns to an ABAA rhyme scheme similar to that of the first two stanzas..