Keramos

Turn, turn, my wheel? Turn round and roundWithout a pause, without a sound:So spins the flying world away!This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,Follows the motion of my hand;Far some must follow, and some command,Though all are made of clay!

Thus sang the Potter at his taskBeneath the blossoming hawthorn-tree,While o'er his features, like a mask,The quilted sunshine and leaf-shadeMoved, as the boughs above him swayed,And clothed him, till he seemed to beA figure woven in tapestry,So sumptuously was he arrayedIn that magnificent attireOf sable tissue flaked with fire.Like a magician he appeared,A conjurer without book or beard;And while he plied his magic art--For it was magical to me--I stood in silence and apart,And wondered more and more to seeThat shapeless, lifeless mass of clayRise up to meet the master's hand,And now contract and now expand,And even his slightest touch obey;While ever in a thoughtful moodHe sang his ditty, and at timesWhistled a tune between the rhymes,As a melodious interlude.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must changeTo something new, to something strange;Nothing that is can pause or stay;The moon will wax, the moon will wane,The mist and cloud will turn to rain,The rain to mist and cloud again,To-morrow be to-day.

Thus still the Potter sang, and still,By some unconscious act of will,The melody and even the wordsWere intermingled with my thoughtAs bits of colored thread are caughtAnd woven into nests of birds.And thus to regions far remote,Beyond the ocean's vast expanse,This wizard in the motley coatTransported me on wings of song,And by the northern shores of FranceBore me with restless speed along.What land is this that seems to beA mingling of the land and sea?This land of sluices, dikes, and dunes?This water-net, that tessellatesThe landscape? this unending mazeOf gardens, through whose latticed gatesThe imprisoned pinks and tulips gaze;Where in long summer afternoonsThe sunshine, softened by the haze,Comes streaming down as through a screen;Where over fields and pastures greenThe painted ships float high in air,And over all and everywhereThe sails of windmills sink and soarLike wings of sea-gulls on the shore?

What land is this? Yon pretty townIs Delft, with all its wares displayed;The pride, the market-place, the crownAnd centre of the Potter's trade.See! every house and room is brightWith glimmers of reflected lightFrom plates that on the dresser shine;Flagons to foam with Flemish beer,Or sparkle with the Rhenish wine,And pilgrim flasks with fleurs-de-lis,And ships upon a rolling sea,And tankards pewter topped, and queerWith comic mask and musketeer!Each hospitable chimney smilesA welcome from its painted tiles;The parlor walls, the chamber floors,The stairways and the corridors,The borders of the garden walks,Are beautiful with fadeless flowers,That never droop in winds or showers,And never wither on their stalks.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief;What now is bud wilt soon be leaf,What now is leaf will soon decay;The wind blows east, the wind blows west;The blue eyes in the robin's nestWill soon have wings and beak and breast,And flutter and fly away.

Now southward through the air I glide,The song my only pursuivant,And see across the landscape wideThe blue Charente, upon whose tideThe belfries and the spires of SaintesRipple and rock from side to side,As, when an earthquake rends its walls,A crumbling city reels and falls.

Who is it in the suburbs here,This Potter, working with such cheer,In this mean house, this mean attire,His manly features bronzed with fire,Whose figulines and rustic waresScarce find him bread from day to day?This madman, as the people say,Who breaks his tables and his chairsTo feed his furnace fires, nor caresWho goes unfed if they are fed,Nor who may live if they are dead?This alchemist with hollow cheeksAnd sunken, searching eyes, who seeks,By mingled earths and ores combinedWith potency of fire, to findSome new enamel, hard and bright,His dream, his passion, his delight?

O Palissy! within thy breastBurned the hot fever of unrest;Thine was the prophets vision, thineThe exultation, the divineInsanity of noble minds,That never falters nor abates,But labors and endures and waits,Till all that it foresees it finds,Or what it cannot find creates!

Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jarA touch can make, a touch can mar;And shall it to the Potter say,What makest thou. Thou hast no hand?As men who think to understandA world by their Creator planned,Who wiser is than they.

Still guided by the dreamy song,As in a trance I float alongAbove the Pyrenean chain,Above the fields and farms of Spain,Above the bright Majorcan isle,That lends its softened name to art,--A spot, a dot upon the chart,Whose little towns, red-roofed with tile,Are ruby-lustred with the lightOf blazing furnaces by night,And crowned by day with wreaths of smoke.Then eastward, wafted in my flightOn my enchanter's magic cloak,I sail across the Tyrrhene SeaInto the land of Italy,And o'er the windy Apennines,Mantled and musical with pines.

The palaces, the princely halls,The doors of houses and the wallsOf churches and of belfry towers,Cloister and castle, street and mart,Are garlanded and gay with flowersThat blossom in the fields of art.Here Gubbio's workshops gleam and glowWith brilliant, iridescent dyes,The dazzling whiteness of the snow,The cobalt blue of summer skies;And vase and scutcheon, cup and plate,In perfect finish emulateFaenza, Florence, Pesaro.

Forth from Urbino's gate there cameA youth with the angelic nameOf Raphael, in form and faceHimself angelic, and divineIn arts of color and design.From him Francesco Xanto caughtSomething of his transcendent grace,And into fictile fabrics wroughtSuggestions of the master's thought.Nor less Maestro Giorgio shinesWith madre-perl and golden linesOf arabesques, and interweavesHis birds and fruits and flowers and leavesAbout some landscape, shaded brown,With olive tints on rock and town.Behold this cup within whose bowl,Upon a ground of deepest blueWith yellow-lustred stars o'erlaid,Colors of every tint and hueMingle in one harmonious whole!With large blue eyes and steadfast gaze,Her yellow hair in net and braid,Necklace and ear-rings all ablazeWith golden lustre o'er the glaze,A woman's portrait; on the scroll,Cana, the Beautiful! A nameForgotten save for such brief fameAs this memorial can bestow,--A gift some lover long agoGave with his heart to this fair dame.

A nobler title to renownIs thine, O pleasant Tuscan town,Seated beside the Arno's stream;For Lucca della Robbia thereCreated forms so wondrous fair,They made thy sovereignty supreme.These choristers with lips of stone,Whose music is not heard, but seen,Still chant, as from their organ-screen,Their Maker's praise; nor these alone,But the more fragile forms of clay,Hardly less beautiful than they,These saints and angels that adornThe walls of hospitals, and tellThe story of good deeds so wellThat poverty seems less forlorn,And life more like a holiday.

Here in this old neglected church,That long eludes the traveller's search,Lies the dead bishop on his tomb;Earth upon earth he slumbering lies,Life-like and death-like in the gloom;Garlands of fruit and flowers in bloomAnd foliage deck his resting place;A shadow in the sightless eyes,A pallor on the patient face,Made perfect by the furnace heat;All earthly passions and desiresBurnt out by purgatorial fires;Seeming to say, "Our years are fleet,And to the weary death is sweet."

But the most wonderful of allThe ornaments on tomb or wallThat grace the fair Ausonian shoresAre those the faithful earth restores,Near some Apulian town concealed,In vineyard or in harvest field,--Vases and urns and bas-reliefs,Memorials of forgotten griefs,Or records of heroic deedsOf demigods and mighty chiefs:Figures that almost move and speak,And, buried amid mould and weeds,Still in their attitudes attestThe presence of the graceful Greek,--Achilles in his armor dressed,Alcides with the Cretan bull,And Aphrodite with her boy,Or lovely Helena of Troy,Still living and still beautiful.

Turn, turn, my wheel! 'T is nature's planThe child should grow into the man,The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;In youth the heart exults and sings,The pulses leap, the feet have wings;In age the cricket chirps, and bringsThe harvest home of day.

And now the winds that southward blow,And cool the hot Sicilian isle,Bear me away. I see belowThe long line of the Libyan Nile,Flooding and feeding the parched landWith annual ebb and overflow,A fallen palm whose branches lieBeneath the Abyssinian sky,Whose roots are in Egyptian sands,On either bank huge water-wheels,Belted with jars and dripping weeds,Send forth their melancholy moans,As if, in their gray mantles hid,Dead anchorites of the ThebaidKnelt on the shore and told their beads,Beating their breasts with loud appealsAnd penitential tears and groans.

This city, walled and thickly setWith glittering mosque and minaret,Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaarsThe dreaming traveller first inhalesThe perfume of Arabian gales,And sees the fabulous earthen jars,Huge as were those wherein the maidMorgiana found the Forty ThievesConcealed in midnight ambuscade;And seeing, more than half believesThe fascinating tales that runThrough all the Thousand Nights and One,Told by the fair Scheherezade.

More strange and wonderful than theseAre the Egyptian deities,Ammonn, and Emeth, and the grandOsiris, holding in his handThe lotus; Isis, crowned and veiled;The sacred Ibis, and the Sphinx;Bracelets with blue enamelled links;The Scarabee in emerald mailed,Or spreading wide his funeral wings;Lamps that perchance their night-watch keptO'er Cleopatra while she slept,--All plundered from the tombs of kings.

Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,Of every tongue, of every place,Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,All that inhabit this great earth,Whatever be their rank or worth,Are kindred and allied by birth,And made of the same clay.

O'er desert sands, o'er gulf and bay,O'er Ganges and o'er Himalay,Bird-like I fly, and flying sing,To flowery kingdoms of Cathay,And bird-like poise on balanced wingAbove the town of King-te-tching,A burning town, or seeming so,--Three thousand furnaces that glowIncessantly, and fill the airWith smoke uprising, gyre on gyreAnd painted by the lurid glare,Of jets and flashes of red fire.

As leaves that in the autumn fall,Spotted and veined with various hues,Are swept along the avenues,And lie in heaps by hedge and wall,So from this grove of chimneys whirledTo all the markets of the world,These porcelain leaves are wafted on,--Light yellow leaves with spots and stainsOf violet and of crimson dye,Or tender azure of a skyJust washed by gentle April rains,And beautiful with celadon.

Nor less the coarser household wares,--The willow pattern, that we knewIn childhood, with its bridge of blueLeading to unknown thoroughfares;The solitary man who staresAt the white river flowing throughIts arches, the fantastic treesAnd wild perspective of the view;And intermingled among theseThe tiles that in our nurseriesFilled us with wonder and delight,Or haunted us in dreams at night.

And yonder by Nankin, behold!The Tower of Porcelain, strange and old,Uplifting to the astonished skiesIts ninefold painted balconies,With balustrades of twining leaves,And roofs of tile, beneath whose eavesHang porcelain bells that all the timeRing with a soft, melodious chime;While the whole fabric is ablazeWith varied tints, all fused in oneGreat mass of color, like a mazeOf flowers illumined by the sun.

Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begunAt daybreak must at dark be done,To-morrow will be another day;To-morrow the hot furnace flameWill search the heart and try the frame,And stamp with honor or with shameThese vessels made of clay.

Cradled and rocked in Eastern seas,The islands of the JapaneseBeneath me lie; o'er lake and plainThe stork, the heron, and the craneThrough the clear realms of azure drift,And on the hillside I can seeThe villages of Imari,Whose thronged and flaming workshops liftTheir twisted columns of smoke on high,Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie,With sunshine streaming through each rift,And broken arches of blue sky.

All the bright flowers that fill the land,Ripple of waves on rock or sand,The snow on Fusiyama's cone,The midnight heaven so thickly sownWith constellations of bright stars,The leaves that rustle, the reeds that makeA whisper by each stream and lake,The saffron dawn, the sunset red,Are painted on these lovely jars;Again the skylark sings, againThe stork, the heron, and the craneFloat through the azure overhead,The counterfeit and counterpartOf Nature reproduced in Art.

Art is the child of Nature; yes,Her darling child, in whom we traceThe features of the mother's face,Her aspect and her attitude,All her majestic lovelinessChastened and softened and subduedInto a more attractive grace,And with a human sense imbued.He is the greatest artist, then,Whether of pencil or of pen,Who follows Nature. Never man,As artist or as artisan,Pursuing his own fantasies,Can touch the human heart, or please,Or satisfy our nobler needs,As he who sets his willing feetIn Nature's footprints, light and fleet,And follows fearless where she leads.

Thus mused I on that morn in May,Wrapped in my visions like the Seer,Whose eyes behold not what is near,But only what is far away,When, suddenly sounding peal on peal,The church-bell from the neighboring townProclaimed the welcome hour of noon.The Potter heard, and stopped his wheel,His apron on the grass threw down,Whistled his quiet little tune,Not overloud nor overlong,And ended thus his simple song:

Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soonThe noon will be the afternoon,Too soon to-day be yesterday;Behind us in our path we castThe broken potsherds of the past,And all are ground to dust a last,And trodden into clay!