[Illustration: "_It’s a storm!_" _he cried._ (See page 90.)]
_*The*_* POTTER *_*and*_* *_*The*_* CLAY
COPYRIGHT, 1901, _By_ LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Published May 7, 1901. 6th Thousand, June 11, 1901. 10th Thousand, July 19, 1901. 13th Thousand, Aug. 16, 1901.
Norwood Press: Berwick & Smith, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
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!’"
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.
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: