Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Wheel Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Wheel poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wheel poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wheel poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

See also:

by Whitman, Walt
...ls, or the lightning’s fork’d stripes! 
Ample Ohio’s bards—bards for California! inland bards—bards of the war;) 
(As a wheel turns on its axle, so I find my chants turning finally on the war;) 
Bards of pride! Bards tallying the ocean’s roar, and the swooping eagle’s
 scream! 
You, by my charm, I invoke!...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...some other use. 
So Man, who here seems principal alone, 
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, 
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. 
When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains 
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; 
When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod, 
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God:(7) 
Then shall Man's pride and dullness comprehend 
His actions', passions', being's, use and en...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ing the golden
Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors
Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens,
Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children
Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them.
Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens,
Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome.
Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely t...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...ght can save. 
 Yes, Sigismond a kaiser is, and you 
 A king, O Ladisläus!—it is true. 
 You thought of God but as a wheel to roll 
 Your chariot on; you who have king's control 
 O'er Poland and its many towns so strong. 
 You, Milan's Duke, to whom at once belong 
 The gold and iron crowns. You, Emperor made 
 By Rome, a son of Hercules 'tis said; 
 And you of Spartibor. And your two crowns 
 Are shining lights; and yet your shadow frowns 
 From every mountain la...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ld turn his gilded prow
Back to the troubled waters of this shore
Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now
The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,
Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.

More barren - ay, those arms will never lean
Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul
In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;
Some other head must wear that aureole,
For I am hers who loves not any man
Whose white and stainless bosom bears the s...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...ad stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en
Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,
Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,
When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face:
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clou...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar; 
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel; 
The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First-day loafe, and looks at the
 oats and rye; 
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirm’d case, 
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s
 bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, 
He turns his quid of tobacco, while h...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...en Dragon
Ran in the woods alone.

And if ever he climbed the crest of luck
And set the flag before,
Returning as a wheel returns,
Came ruin and the rain that burns,
And all began once more.

And naught was left King Alfred
But shameful tears of rage,
In the island in the river
In the end of all his age.

In the island in the river
He was broken to his knee:
And he read, writ with an iron pen,
That God had wearied of Wessex men
And given their country, field and f...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten--
Bury it! Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ming red; 
Nor these alone — for each right hand 
Is ready with a sheathless brand. 
They part, pursue, return, and wheel 
With searching flambeau, shining steel; 
And last of all, his sabre waving, 
Stern Giaffir in his fury raving: 
And now almost they touch the cave — 
Oh! must that grot be Selim's grave? 

XXIII. 

Dauntless he stood — "'Tis come — soon past — 
One kiss, Zuleika — 'tis my last: 
But yet my band not far from shore 
May hear this signal, see the fla...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...ing from the shower,
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,
When idly first, ambitious of the town,
She left her wheel and robes of country brown.

Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train,
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?
E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!

Ah, no!—To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...l:  Thrice happy! that from him the grave did hide  The empty loom, cold hearth, and silent wheel,  And tears that flowed for ills which patience could not heal.   'Twas a hard change, an evil time was come;  We had no hope, and no relief could gain.  But soon, with proud parade, the noisy drum  Beat round, to sweep the streets of want and pain.  My husband's...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...hild-like, parcel out praise or blame:
They bore it all in complacent guise,
As though an artificer, after contriving
A wheel-work image as if it were living,
Should find with delight it could motion to strike him!
So found the Duke, and his mother like him:
The lady hardly got a rebuff---
That had not been contemptuous enough,
With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause,
And kept off the old mother-cat's claws.

IX.

So, the little lady grew silent and thin,
Paling ...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...fortune's wind the sails of purpose spread:
And at the prow make figured maidenhead
O'erride the seas and answer to the wheel. 
And let him deep in memory's hold have stor'd
Water of Helicon: and let him fit
The needle that doth true with heaven accord:
Then bid her crew, love, diligence and wit
With justice, courage, temperance come aboard,
And at her helm the master reason sit. 

16
This world is unto God a work of art,
Of which the unaccomplish'd heavenly plan
Is h...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ath not been a duchess or a queen;
Now be we caitives*, as it is well seen: *captives
Thanked be Fortune, and her false wheel,
That *none estate ensureth to be wele*. *assures no continuance of
And certes, lord, t'abiden your presence prosperous estate*
Here in this temple of the goddess Clemence
We have been waiting all this fortenight:
Now help us, lord, since it lies in thy might.

"I, wretched wight, that weep and waile thus,
Was whilom wife to king Capaneus,
That...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...und,
     And thought the battled fence so frail,
     It waved like cobweb in the gale;
     Amid his senses' giddy wheel,
     Did he not desperate impulse feel,
     Headlong to plunge himself below,
     And meet the worst his fears foreshow?—
     Thus Ellen, dizzy and astound,
     As sudden ruin yawned around,
     By crossing terrors wildly tossed,
     Still for the Douglas fearing most,
     Could scarce the desperate thought withstand,
     To buy his s...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
....
Its echo, only half apprehended,
Lingered about the room. He ended
Screwing the little rubies in,
Setting the wheels to lock and spin,
Curling the infinitesimal springs,
Fixing the filigree hands. Chippings
Of precious stones lay strewn about.
The table before him was a rout
Of splashes and sparks of coloured light.
There was yellow gold in sheets, and quite
A heap of emeralds, and steel.
Here was a gem, there was a wheel.
And glasses lay like li...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...he light which leaves them still
Farther behind & deeper in the shade.
But not the less with impotence of will
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them & round each other, and fulfill
Their work and to the dust whence they arose
Sink & corruption veils them as they lie
And frost in these performs what fire in those.
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said, "And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? & why"-
I would ha...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. 
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so c...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...ered linen handkerchief 
 to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads 
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea 
 Koktebele
 formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish 
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute 
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
 when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon th...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Wheel poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things