Classic Poem

I.

Oak, elm and ash; these
Are the three greatest trees.

The curious arts of man reveal
No braver engine than the wheel

Shrunk and strong enough,
Durable and tough,

Must each part be, fitly to sustain
Part, and each must be of different grain.

Slowly, and many winters film on film
And tortuous fibre tangling, grows the elm.

Its texture many qualities combines;
The strength of ash persists in crooked lines.

The ash makes music when its branches stir,
Because its leaf is like a dulcimer.

Strong and elastic for the slender spoke,
In strength for weight no wood surpasses oak.

(Iron, required to answer the same ends,
Would fail; for iron either breaks or bends.)

So far the stock is made, until,
Each other member in its place,
The centre of the finished wheel,

New-bored, receives the axle case.

So long as it be dry it lasts like stone.
The oak of all the trees is soonest known.

Its leaves, which have a sinuous bordure,
Make chaplets for their heads when men endure.

Its fruit is bitter and sweet: the stubborn brood
Of swine are fond of acorns for their food.

Elm, ash and oak. These
Are the three greatest trees.

II.

The wheelwright takes the chosen block
Of elm, chopped rudely, less or more,
Into the likeness of a stock.

First, through its woolly stubborn core,
(It cuts more cleanly being wet)
He makes a temporary bore

Jammed on a mandril, it is set
In the lathe, and turned on either side.
The work is little skilled as yet.

A craftier hand must now be plied
To mark and sink the mortices,
Radial and narrowing inside.

So the spokes' heels drive home with ease,
And tightly hold, to make the wheel
The perfect whole it surely is.

So far the stock is made, until,
Each other member in its place,
The centre of the finished wheel,

New-bored, receives the axle case.

III.

Spokes are made of seasoned oak.
Oak, that is, kept for a year
Free to air, secure from rain,
So it may be shrunk, austere,
Ere it come to bear a yoke.

Till the stubborn length of wood,
Bone hard, tough, and straight of grain,
Food of copylathe be grown,
Shapeliness and shape to attain,
Fit for perfect neighbourhood.

Unto that all know the means
Whereby the clean thing is done
Wheels and cutting steel achieve,
(Life not giving everyone
Knowledge of what turning means)

Hear tell; give some stanzas' leave:
Swift volution of the stuff
To be cut; the cutter still.
Simple principle enough
For the simplest to receive.

Given store of motive force,
Wit can clothe the brute with skill,
Set complexity therein,
Until almost what you will
Follows as a thing of course.

The ingenious copylathe
Is a kind of twin machine,
One part dummy, blithe the other.
In the dummy smoothe and clean
Turns the model, which doth scathe.

Dummy tool in form of wheel,
Slowly, while its frenzied brother,
Shell-shaped-toothed, in circular
Saw style, making dusty smother,
Hum as though it liked its meal,

Cuts the model's counterpart
With a long and spiral scar.
Brief, in the result, the one
Like to one, as star to star,
Perfectly in every part,

Let the explanation cease,
Though the theme be not to shun;
Those who can will understand
How 'tis simple when 'tis done.
Let not others spoil their peace.

Spoke's perfection almost reached,
Head is turned to size by hand.
Spokes adjusted, wheel is speeched

IV.

The felloe — as to say, the wooden rim
Which seems the wheel's essential — is composed
Of six ash parts, all jointed, jammed and closed
Together, and upon each other limb

The form of these, marked out, is roughly sawn
With bandsaw on a table, and then shaped
To smoothness on a lathe disc, cut and scraped,
To just circumference by stages drawn.

The holes bored out, both to receive the spokes,
And rowell, (pegs which bind them one to one)
A wheel is fashioned, strong enough to run
To the press, a brute which knows a way to coax.

Rough parts to know their fellows. Fastened prone,
Steam or hydraulic driven clamps distress
The wheel's circumference, and force and press
Tenant to socket, though it creak and moan.

Small other rites need not be writ or read
There be, mere finishing, which done, the glad
Victim, by labourer or prentice lad
Is trundled gaily to the shoeing shed.

V.

A mere pentroof, above a yard
Within three boundaries of a square;
The fourth side open to the air,
And all the weather choose to bear.

A furnace, like a baker's, barred
With balanced door; a shallow well
Hid by a platform; short to tell
Is all its simple apparel.

The silly carcases of wheels
Lean sheepishly against the wall,
One against one, in easy call
For ordeal of completing thrall.

The black, shut furnace yet conceals
The tire, a-heating for a girth.
For one wheel, to achieve its birth,
And round it into something worth.

The wheel lies prone upon its face
Upon the platform, fixed thereto
With nut and collar on a screw
By rough-bored axle-hole thrust through

Great heat and brightness flood the place
The smiths have dragged and set the tire
About the felloes, slack with fire,
Shrunk it will grip and bind them nigher

A blow or so with wooden sledge
To shape it somewhat. Through the smoke
The careful workmen blink and choke,
Loiter to deal another stroke.

The felloe fires; but at its edge
Already water pours to quench:
The sinking slab reveals the trench,
And smoke gives place to sulphur stench.

The shed is filled with moan as hell is;
The hot iron, growing cool again,
Straitens and makes the wheel complain,
And all its members crack and strain

Spokes driven home to stock and felloes,
Oak into elm and ash; these tough
Trees make the good wheel stout enough
To run on smooth roads or on rough.

VI.

O wheels!
O they which bear and run and halt,
Their axle being faultless, without fault,
Stouter by wear, unto the last stretched point
Of stuff's endurance, be they limb and joint
Taut and uncrannied, lest they nurse the wet
(The same which festereth and doth beget

Crawling and writhing rot) O wheels!
Fashion the perfect symbol which conceals:
How stout stock hangs to axle, asking not
Why good direction stirs not from the spot
Where better wisdom placed it to revolve;
Fine though the question be and quaint to solve.

Freedom and safety, safe betwixt
Linchpin and axle-shoulder straitly fixed.
What purpose have ye, wheels, therefrom released?
" Being a captive , saw I, " wrote the priest
Ezekiel, certain vision, which he writ
Into a book, that men might wot of it;

Where purposes are full, " because
The spirit of the living creature was
Within the wheels; " from fixed and steadfast heart,
Thoughts radiant, pitiless, unyielding, start
To end of act, where feet and hands, by dint
Of strife, are one with face, and set like flint.

Run, wheels, and mock the loadstone earth.
Ask, wheels, in vain, what engine has been worth
To man your cunning fashion, run nor swerve;
A double rectitude lies in your curve;
Your power is power of power till reckoning reels;
Yours is the spirit of the creature, wheels!