The Wheel
Through winter-time we call on spring,And through the spring on summer call,And when abounding hedges ringDeclare that winter’s best of all;And after that there s nothing goodBecause the spring-time has not come--Nor know that what disturbs our bloodIs but its longing for the tomb.
About this text
The Wheel is in the public domain. This text is taken from The tower, Project Gutenberg ebook #72985; 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. B. Yeats, The Wheel, in The Tower (1928), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #72985, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-tower/the-wheel.html, id L19968.
Form and metre
The Wheel is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 ABABC-C- springA · callB · ringA · allB · goodC · come · bloodC · tomb
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. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Through winter-time we call on spring, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And through the spring on summer call, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And when abounding hedges ring | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘· |
| Declare that winter’s best of all; | 8 | ˘/·/˘··· |
| And after that there s nothing good | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Because the spring-time has not come-- | 8 | ········ |
| Nor know that what disturbs our blood | 8 | ····˘//· |
| Is but its longing for the tomb. | 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.