THE POTTER AND THE CLAY

"It's a storm!" he cried. (See page 90.)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The comparatively unknown rendering of the verse from the Rubáiyát of Omar Kháyyám, quoted on the succeeding page, is to be found in the first edition of Fitzgerald's translation of the Persian poem.

"For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,

I watch'd the Potter thumping his wet clay:

And with its all-obliterated Tongue

It murmur'd—'Gently, Brother, gently, pray!'"

 

From the Rubáiyát.

PERMISSION to use the poem, "The Potter's Wheel," which appears on the next page, was granted by the owners of the English copyright of Browning's works through Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., London, and by the American publishers of Browning, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.

The
Potter's Wheel

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,

That metaphor! and feel

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—

Thou, to whom fools propound,

When the wine makes its round,

"Since life fleets, all is change; the past gone, seize to-day!"

 

Fool! All that is, at all,

Lasts ever, past recall;

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:

What entered into thee,

That was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

 

He fixed thee mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest:

Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent,

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

 

What though the earlier grooves,

Which ran the laughing loves

Around thy base, no longer pause and press?

What though, about thy rim,

Skull-things in order grim

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

 

Look not thou down but up!

To uses of a cup,

The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,

The new wine's foaming flow,

The Master's lips aglow!

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?

 

But I need, now as then,

Thee, God, who mouldest men;

And since, not even while the whirl was worst,

Did I—to the wheel of life

With shapes and colors rife,

Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

 

So, take and use Thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

 

Robert Browning.