Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
Even this does not sufficiently express his thought of man’s absolute irresponsibility for his acts.
We have all met the parallel drawn between man and the pottery fashioned by the moulder from the clay. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the helplessness of the human being in the hands of the power that fashioned and shaped him, even ages before his birth,—the uncontrollable force that determined the length of his body, the color of his hair, the size and shape of his brain and the contour of his face. But the comparison made in the beautiful stanza wrought by Omar, and retouched and gilded by the magic of FitzGerald, is wondrously powerful and fine. The poet ranges his poor pieces of pottery in line, each representing a man; each imperfect in structure or form, like all the other creatures ever made. These poor, imperfect vessels, fresh from the potter, each pleads its cause and makes excuses for its faults.
After a momentary silence spake
Some vessel of a more ungainly Make:
“They sneer at me for leaning all awry:
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?”