Famous Potter Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Potter poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous potter poems. These examples illustrate what a famous potter poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Khayyam, Omar
...A potter at his work I chanced to see,
Pounding some earth and shreds of pottery;
I looked with eyes of insight, and methought
'Twas Adam's dust with which he made so free!...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...the world is nicely groomed and full of golden song;
I'll smoke a bit and joke a bit, and read the news, and then
I'll potter round my peach-trees till I hear the luncheon gong.
And after that I think I'll doze an hour, well, maybe two,
And then I'll show some kindred soul how well my roses thrive;
I'll do the things I never yet have found the time to do. . . .
Oh, won't I be the busy man when I am Sixty-five.
I'll revel in my library; I'll read De M...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...Ah, potter, stay thine hand' with ruthless art
Put not to such base use man's mortal part!
See, thou art mangling on thy cruel wheel
Faridun's fingers, and Kai Khosrau's heart!...Read more of this...
by
Moody, William Vaughn
...the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;
And lo, the shard the potter cast away
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine
Fulfilled of the divine
Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, --
They swept, and di...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...But yesterday, I saw a potter in a bazaar treading
most vigorously the clay he was molding. The clay
seemed to say to him: I also have been like thee; treat
me, then, with less harshness....Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...I inherited forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired
A thousand acres. But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand acres,
I bustled through the years with axe and plow,
Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.
Squire Higbee wrongs me to say
That I died from smok...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...fter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor."
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows androbins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...t of limpid wine,
my ears are ever attentive to the melodious sounds of
the flute and of the rubab [viol]. Oh, if the potter make
a pitcher of my dust, would that that pitcher might constantly
be full of wine!...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...I saw a busy potter by the way
Kneading with might and main a lump of clay;
And, lo! the clay cried, «Use me gently, pray;
I was a man myself but yesterday!»...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...the race between men who are
For singing "Turkey in the straw" or "There is a fountain filled with blood" --
(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord);
For cards, or for Rev. Peet's lecture on the holy land;
For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate;
For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata;
For men, or for money;
For the people or against them.
This was it:
Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club,
Headed by Ben Pantier's wife,
Went to the Villa...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...ed
with phrases from his saxophone --
some like honey, some like vinegar --
is surpassed only by my gratitude
to Tommy Potter for taking the time
to join us on this breezy afternoon
with his most unwieldy bass
and to the esteemed Arthur Taylor
who is somehow managing to navigate
this crowd with his cumbersome drums.
And I bow deeply to Thelonious Monk
for figuring out a way
to motorize -- or whatever -- his huge piano
so he could be with us today.
This music is lou...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...O potter! be attentive, if thou possessest sound reason!
How long wilt thou abase man in moulding his clay? It
is the finger of Feridoun, the hand of Kai-Khosrou which
you thus put upon your wheel....Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears....Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
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 s...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...rld of those whose minds are sick
Became my work in life, and all my world.
Poor ruined boy! You were, at last, the potter
And I and all my deeds of charity
The vessels of your hand....Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...iss'd,
How many Kisses might it take -- and give!
XXXVII.
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!"
XXXVIII.
And has not such a Story from of Old
Down Man's successive generations roll'd
Of such a clod of saturated Earth
Cast by the Maker into Human mould?
XXXIX.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping unde...Read more of this...
by
Fitzgerald, Edward
...cold Lip I kissed
How many Kisses might it take—and give!
36
For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,
I watched the Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all obliterated Tongue
It murmured—"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"
37
Ah, fill the Cup:—what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn TOMORROW, and dead YESTERDAY,
Why fret about them if TODAY be sweet!
38
One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste—
...Read more of this...
by
Herrick, Robert
...As is your name, so is your comely face
Touch'd every where with such diffused grace,
As that in all that admirable round,
There is not one least solecism found;
And as that part, so every portion else
Keeps line for line with beauty's parallels....Read more of this...
by
Piercy, Marge
...h Side.
Forty feet of Corinthian candle
celebrate Pullman embedded
lonely raisin in a cake of concrete.
The Potter Palmers float
in an island parthenon.
Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat
are postmarked with angels and lambs.
But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned
in a triangle of trees swims dappled with leaf shadow,
sketched light arch within arch
delicate as fingernail moons.
The green doors should not be locked.
Doors of fern a...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...Yesterday, I visited the workshop of a potter; there I
saw two thousand pitchers, some speaking, others silent.
Each one of these seemed to say to me: Where is the
potter? Where is the buyer of pitchers? Where the
seller?...Read more of this...
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