wheel (n.)

wheel (v.)

Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound;

She feels no biting pang the while she sings;

Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around,

Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.

Richard Gifford (1725-1807): Contemplation.

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Old Testament: Ecclesiastes xii. 6.

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to the Satires. Line 307.

As if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.

Old Testament: Ezekiel x. 10.

I wandered by the brookside,

I wandered by the mill;

I could not hear the brook flow,

The noisy wheel was still.

Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) (1809-1885): The Brookside.

Like him in Aesop, he whipped his horses withal, and put his shoulder to the wheel.

Robert Burton (1576-1640): Anatomy of Melancholy. Part ii. Sect. 1, Memb. 2.

I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,

And give them voice and utterance once again.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,

And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn

Throws up a steamy column, and the cups

That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,

So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book iv. The Winter Evening. Line 34.

The world is a wheel, and it will all come round right.

Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) (1805-1881): Endymion. Chap. lxx.

What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,

And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?

No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:

May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): A Death in the Desert.