Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WHEELS, by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WHEELS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Who made the first wheels in the ages past?
Last Line: But all men will ride on those wheels some day.
Subject(s): Wheels


Who made the first wheels in the ages past?
They were surely not light, nor handsome, nor fast.
They were only rough cuts of a hollow log,
And they jerked through the wilderness, jog, jog, jog;
But barrows and carts and carriages grand,
And big locomotives that conquer the land,
Bicycles, steamboats, and automobiles,
Were all, and far more, in that first pair of wheels.
Yet where lived the inventor, and what was his name?
Not the least whisper is hinted by fame.
Statues we raise to thousands of men,
Heroes admired of the sword or the pen,
But none of them all is so worthy as he
Who cut the first wheels from the trunk of a tree.

And, pondering this, I've been thinking that now
Some shy little fellow with deep-dreaming brow
May be living among us, unknown to us all,
Looking hard at some tree that has happened to fall,
With a brain that can think and a heart that can feel,
And contriving, for all of creation, -- a wheel!
"He has wheels in his head," the neighbors will say,
But all men will ride on those wheels some day.





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