She
by Theodore Roethke
My lady laughs, delighting in what is.If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.
She makes space lonely with a lovely song.
She lilts a low soft language, and I hear
Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.
We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
She cries out loud the soul's own secret joy;
She dances, and the ground bears her away.
She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again.
I feel her presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.
Much like I Knew a Woman, the first line is divided into two phrases per line. The first phrase is four syllables, while the second is six making the line ten counts. This is also similar to I knew a woman. The first phrase is alliterative in lady laughs.
The second line is a similar formula with the same syllables per phrase as the first(4/6). This creates both an interlinear asymmetry and a rhythm based on twos. This is appropriate for a poem based on the relationship between a man and a woman. The second line also continues the alliteration of the first line with she and sighs, and continues to eschew this device for the second phrase.
The third line breaks the phrasing and pattern and refers to her making space lonely with a lovely song. Here the loneliness is the bittersweet loneliness of love, hinted at with the word lovely. The alliterative aspects from the first phrases of the preceding lines are present here again, and becomes almost homo-phonic with the words lonely and lovely.
The fourth line continues the ten beat measure, but inverts the pattern with the first phrase holding seven syllables while the last holds three. The alliterative aspect of the former lines is continued with low and language.
The fifth line is another single phrase in which the line consists of ten unbroken syllables.
The sixth line turns on the phrase mouth to mouth, where it's normally a common idiom for breath resuscitation, here it can mean kissing or singing. In any case the breath they supply each other is salving in practice. The idiom itself also continues the consonance introduced in the prior stanza. The whole of the stanza will maintain 10 beats per line.
The second line of the second stanza contains a direct metaphor where one thing is said to be another. Rivers and gardens have been common themes is love poetry for quite some time. Although a philosopher and not a poet, since the time of Heraclitus rivers have also held a meaning of passing time. He famously said that "No one looks at the same river twice". Gardens are common as a way of conveying fruitful bounty, indeed the garden is the biblical metaphor for heaven on earth in the manner of the Garden of Eden. In the Greek of biblical times, to know someone meant to copulate with them, and the tree of knowledge would be the tree of copulation in some interpretations. So what does it mean that the garden is a river? Well the garden still conveys lustre and bounty, while the river though beautiful primarily conveys time passing. The direction of the river is South, if her body is a garden and it flows south that may be a euphemistic expression of sexual desire. The third line reinforces and hints at this interpretation as well.
The fourth line of the second stanza depicts her as dancing, but instead of moving, the world moves instead. This is conveyed in a concrete sense, but the meaning of moving someone's world is perhaps still implicit in the line. The poem is careful to both convey and hide the heaviness of sexual passion in it's lines. The inferences derived from the verbiage are all highly allusive and bear out on a more thorough analysis. While the rhythm and superficial content paint a footloose and fancy free environment on a surface level.
The first line of the third stanza follows the same rhythm set out earlier in the poem. Here the narrator involves a paradox. Although She is anything but common, he still feels her presence in the common day. The second line will elaborate further and what happens commonly will take on new significance. She widens his eyes, as the slow dark of the common day does so to each pupil. So She does to him. The last lines convey her languid grace with a simile to water. The last two lines have a rhyme scheme to tie things up nicely with me and be. Here the narration again involves itself in the beloved as a subject of time. Stayed by what was, being the pasts effect on her, and pulled by what would be being the futures' effect on her.
The sixth line turns on the phrase mouth to mouth, where it's normally a common idiom for breath resuscitation, here it can mean kissing or singing. In any case the breath they supply each other is salving in practice. The idiom itself also continues the consonance introduced in the prior stanza. The whole of the stanza will maintain 10 beats per line.
The second line of the second stanza contains a direct metaphor where one thing is said to be another. Rivers and gardens have been common themes is love poetry for quite some time. Although a philosopher and not a poet, since the time of Heraclitus rivers have also held a meaning of passing time. He famously said that "No one looks at the same river twice". Gardens are common as a way of conveying fruitful bounty, indeed the garden is the biblical metaphor for heaven on earth in the manner of the Garden of Eden. In the Greek of biblical times, to know someone meant to copulate with them, and the tree of knowledge would be the tree of copulation in some interpretations. So what does it mean that the garden is a river? Well the garden still conveys lustre and bounty, while the river though beautiful primarily conveys time passing. The direction of the river is South, if her body is a garden and it flows south that may be a euphemistic expression of sexual desire. The third line reinforces and hints at this interpretation as well.
The fourth line of the second stanza depicts her as dancing, but instead of moving, the world moves instead. This is conveyed in a concrete sense, but the meaning of moving someone's world is perhaps still implicit in the line. The poem is careful to both convey and hide the heaviness of sexual passion in it's lines. The inferences derived from the verbiage are all highly allusive and bear out on a more thorough analysis. While the rhythm and superficial content paint a footloose and fancy free environment on a surface level.
The first line of the third stanza follows the same rhythm set out earlier in the poem. Here the narrator involves a paradox. Although She is anything but common, he still feels her presence in the common day. The second line will elaborate further and what happens commonly will take on new significance. She widens his eyes, as the slow dark of the common day does so to each pupil. So She does to him. The last lines convey her languid grace with a simile to water. The last two lines have a rhyme scheme to tie things up nicely with me and be. Here the narration again involves itself in the beloved as a subject of time. Stayed by what was, being the pasts effect on her, and pulled by what would be being the futures' effect on her.
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