The Wheel

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1922from The Tower8 lines

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.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

Always longing for the next season, we are really longing for death.

The poem traces a restless round of wanting. In winter we call for spring, in spring for summer, and when the summer hedges ring with birds we declare that winter was best. Nothing is ever good, because the next season has not come. The last two lines give the real reason: what "disturbs our blood" is not a wish for spring at all but "its longing for the tomb". The turn is quiet and chilling, and it makes the whole wheel of the seasons a journey towards rest.

Lines to remember

Through winter-time we call on spring,

Is but its longing for the tomb.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6Always the next season
The seasons turn and our wishes turn with them, always one step ahead. The chain of clauses joined by "And" keeps the wheel spinning, and the twist in line 4, praising winter in the height of summer, shows the wanting is endless. Line 6 breaks off on a pause.
Lines 7 to 8The real longing
The final couplet explains what we do not know about ourselves. Our restlessness is "but its longing for the tomb": the blood wants stillness, not another season. The plain word "but" makes this sound less tragic than simply true.

Themes

Restlessness

The first six lines are a gently comic picture of human discontent. We "call on spring", then "on summer call", then praise winter, and decide there is "nothing good". Nobody is satisfied with the present. The inverted word order in line 2 makes the round of wishes feel like a turning wheel.

Death

The poem reads every desire as a disguised wish for an end. What "disturbs our blood" is a "longing for the tomb", so death is pictured not as terror but as the place where the wheel finally stops. The idea is dark, yet the tone is calm, almost consoling.

Context

The poem was first printed in Seven Poems and a Fragment (Cuala Press, 1922) and collected in The Tower (Macmillan, 1928), where it sits among short poems on age and time such as "Youth and Age" and "The New Faces". The image of a turning wheel suits Yeats's lifelong interest in cycles, of the seasons, of lives and of history.

Form

Eight lines of four beats, rhymed ABABCDCD. The first quatrain rhymes cleanly ("spring" and "ring", "call" and "all"), but in the second "good" and "blood" rhyme only to the eye and "come" and "tomb" are a half rhyme, so the sound grows less certain as the thought darkens.