NPM: The Potter's Song

(I've just realized 'Plum Tree' was a repeat from last year ... I won't repeat another one.)

The Potter's Song is excerpted from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's much longer poem, Keramos (found here, in which the narrator listens to a potter singing and muses, between the song's stanzas, on life, the world, and the brotherhood of man...

Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
Without 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;
For some must follow, and some command,
  Though all are made of clay!

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To 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,
  Tomorrow be today.

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 nest
Will soon have wings and beak and breast,
  And flutter and fly away.

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

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