What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
This paradox, which comforts while it mocks, means, "My achievements are ridiculously small in comparison with my hopes, my ambitions, my dreams: thank God for all this! Thank God I was not content with low aims, thank God I had my aspirations and have them still: they point to future development."
In the twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth stanzas, Browning suddenly returns to this idea: in the appraisement of the human soul, efforts, which if unsuccessful, count for nothing in worldly estimation, pay an enormous ultimate dividend, and must therefore be rated high. The reason why the world counts only things done and not things attempted, is because the world's standards are too coarse: they are adapted only for gross and obvious results. You can not weigh diamonds on hay scales: the indicator would show precisely nothing. And yet one diamond, too fine for these huge scales, might be of more value than thousands of tons of hay.
From the twenty-sixth stanza to the end, Browning takes up the figure of the Potter, the Wheel, and the Clay. I think that he was drawn to use this metaphor, not from Scripture, but as a protest against the use of it in Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyám. Fitzgerald published his translation in 1859; and although it attracted no public attention, it is certainly possible that Browning saw it. He would have enjoyed its melodious beauty, but the philosophy of the poem would have been to him detestable and abhorrent. Much is made there of the Potter, meaning blind destiny: and the moral is, "Drink! the Past gone, seize To-day!" Browning explicitly rejects and scorns this teaching: it is propounded by fools for the benefit of other fools.
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.
In Browning's metaphor, the Potter is God: the Wheel is the whirling course of life's experiences: the Clay is man. God holds us on the wheel to turn us into the proper shape. Owing to our flaws, the strain is sometimes too great, and some of us are warped and twisted by this stern discipline: other characters, made of better material, constantly grow more beautiful and more serviceable under the treatment. Browning had suffered the greatest sorrow of his life when he wrote this poem, and yet he had faith enough to say in the thirty-first stanza, that not even while the whirl was worst, did he, bound dizzily to the terrible wheel of life, once lose his belief that he was in God's hands and that the deep cuttings were for his ultimate benefit.
In the making of a cup, the Potter engraved around the base lovely images of youth and pleasure, and near the rim skulls and signs of death: but what is a cup for? It is meant for the Master's lips. The nearer therefore we approach to death, the nearer we are to God's presence, who is making us fit to slake His thirst. Finished at last, we are done forever with life's wheel: we come to the banquet, the festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, the glorious appearance of the Master.
RABBI BEN EZRA
1864