en.

And what if it was human-faced like the Sphinx?
There's no riddle to solve, whate'er the world thinks:
The fiat that made it, from its heels to its hair,
Wasn't simply 'Be man!' but 'Stand up and Be Ware!'

And straightway acknowledging its true kith and kin
With that host of things known to be hollow within,
It took up a stand with its handles akimbo,
Bowels and bosom in a cavernous limbo.

Curving out at the bottom, it swelled to a jig;
Curving in at the top, narrow-necked, to the mug;
Two sockets for sunshine in the frontispiece placed,
A crack just below--merely a matter of taste;
A flap on each side hiding holes of resounding,
For conveyance within of noises surrounding;
And a nozzle before,
All befitted to snore,
Was a part of the ware
For adornment and air.

Now for what was this slender and curious mold?
Had it no purpose? Had it nothing to hold?
A world full of meaning, my friend, if 'twere told.
You remember those jars in the Arabian Night,
As they stood 'neath the stars in Al' Baba's eyesight:
Little dreamed Ali Baba what ajar could excite--
For how much did betide
When a man was inside!
When from under each cover a man was to spring,
Where then was the empty, insignificant thing?
It was so with this jar,
'Twasn't hollow by far;
Breathless at first as an exhausted receiver,
When the air was let in, lo! man, the achiever!

But an accident happened, a cruel surprise;
How frail proved the man, and how very unwise!
As if plaster of Paris, and not Paradise,
No more of clay consecrate,
He broke up disconsolate,
Pot-luck for his fortune, though the world's potentate.

It brings to our memory that Indian camp,
Where men lay in ambush, every one with a lamp,
Each light darkly hid in a vessel of clay,
Till the sword should be drawn, and then on came the fray.
'Twas so in the fortunes of this queer earthen race,
(It happened before they were more than a brace).
The fact of a fall
Did break upon all!
The lamp of each life being uncovered by sin,
The pitcher was broken, and the devil pitched in!

So much for his story to the moment he erred,
From what dignified pot he became a pot-sherd.
Since that day the great world,
Like a wheel having twirled,
Hath replenished the earth from the primitive pair,
And turned into being every species of ware.

There are millions a