There is a wheel inside my head
THERE is a wheel inside my headOf wantonness and wine,An old, cracked fiddle is begging without,But the wind with scents of the sea is fed,And the sun seems glad to shine.
The sun and the wind are akin to you,As you are akin to June.But the fiddle! . . . It giggles and twitters about,And, love and laughter! who gave him the cue?—He’s playing your favourite tune.
Words in this poem
- cracked a.
- Coarsely ground or broken; as, cracked wheat.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
There is a wheel inside my head is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #1568; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. E. Henley, There is a wheel inside my head, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/there-is-a-wheel-inside-my-head.html, id L12398.
Form and metre
There is a wheel inside my head is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. 87% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.8 syllables. 10% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AB-AB headA · wineB · without · fedA · shineB
- 2 AB-AB youA · juneB · about · cueA · tuneB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| THERE is a wheel inside my head | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| Of wantonness and wine, | 6 | ·/˘˘·· |
| An old, cracked fiddle is begging without, | 10 | ···/˘·/˘·· |
| But the wind with scents of the sea is fed, | 10 | ·········· |
| And the sun seems glad to shine. | 7 | ······· |
| The sun and the wind are akin to you, | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| As you are akin to June. | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| But the fiddle! . . . It giggles and twitters about, | 12 | ··/˘·/˘····· |
| And, love and laughter! who gave him the cue?— | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| He’s playing your favourite tune. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.