The Burning Wheel 1916 is a collection of poems by English author Aldous Huxley Published when the poet was only twentytwo The Burning Wheel captures the mind of an artist at its earliest fertile stage enthralled with a world either blooming with change or wilting with allout war Although Huxley is known foremost as a novelist his poetry exhibits a mastery of language and an uncommon sense of the music inherent to words quotThe Burning Wheelquot opens the collection with a kaleidoscopic vision of life and creation illuminating the poets debt to the French Symbolists quotWeary of its own turningquot the burning wheel slows for a moments rest This wheel both machine and pure wild flame is the poet compelled to create the mind that quotwakes from the sleep of its quiet brightness And burns with a darkening passion and painquot In quotQuotidian Visionquot Huxley returns to earth to remark quotThere is a sadness in the street And sullenly the folk I meet Droop their heads as they walk alongquot In these simple rhyming couplets the poet channels the verse and vision of William Blake to see despite the quotmist of cold and muffling greyquot a quotdead world move for him once more ...
