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07 - The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty eight, The Farewell. Then he descended the steps
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  Speaker 1: of the temple, and all the people followed him. And
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  Speaker 1: he reached his ship and stood upon the deck, and
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  Speaker 1: facing the people again, he raised his voice and said,
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  Speaker 1: people of Orphelies, the wind bids me leave you. Less
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  Speaker 1: hasty am I than the wind? Yet I must go.
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  Speaker 1: We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day
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  Speaker 1: where we have ended another day, and no sunrise finds
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  Speaker 1: us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps
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  Speaker 1: we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant.
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  Speaker 1: And it is in our ripeness and our fullness of
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  Speaker 1: heart that we are given to the wind, and are scattered.
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  Speaker 1: Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the
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  Speaker 1: words I have spoken. But should my voice fade in
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  Speaker 1: your ears, and my love in your memory, then I
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  Speaker 1: will come again, And with a richer heart and lips
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  Speaker 1: more yielding to the spirit, will I speak, YEA, I
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  Speaker 1: shall return with the tide. And though death may hide
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  Speaker 1: me and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will
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  Speaker 1: I seek your understanding? And not in vain will I seek?
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  Speaker 1: If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall
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  Speaker 1: reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more
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  Speaker 1: kin to your thoughts. I go with the wind, people
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  Speaker 1: of orphiles, but not down into emptiness. And if this
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  Speaker 1: day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love,
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  Speaker 1: then let it be a promise till another day. Man's
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  Speaker 1: needs change, but not his love nor his desire, that
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  Speaker 1: his love should satisfy his needs. Know therefore that from
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  Speaker 1: the greater silence I shall re turn the mist that
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  Speaker 1: drifts away at dawn leaving, but dew in the fields
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  Speaker 1: shall rise and gather into a cloud, and then fall
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  Speaker 1: down in rain. And not unlike the mist have I
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  Speaker 1: been in the stillness of the night. I have walked
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  Speaker 1: in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses,
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  Speaker 1: and your heart beats were in my heart, and your
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  Speaker 1: breath was upon my face. And I knew you all.
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  Speaker 1: I I knew your joy and your pain, and in
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  Speaker 1: your sleep your dreams were my dreams. And oftentimes I
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  Speaker 1: was among you a lake among the mountains. I mirrored
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  Speaker 1: the summits in you, and the bending slopes, and even
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  Speaker 1: the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires. And
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  Speaker 1: to my silence came the laughter of your children in
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  Speaker 1: streams and the longing of your youths in rivers, And
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  Speaker 1: when they reached my depth, the streets and the rivers
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  Speaker 1: cease not yet to sing. But sweeter still than laughter,
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  Speaker 1: and greater than longing, came to me. It was the
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  Speaker 1: boundless in you, the vast Man in whom you are
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  Speaker 1: all but sells and sinews, he in whose chat all
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  Speaker 1: your singing is but a soundless throbbing. It is in
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  Speaker 1: the vast Man that you are vast, and in beholding
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  Speaker 1: him that I beheld you and loved you. For what
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  Speaker 1: distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?
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  Speaker 1: What visions, what expectations, and what presumptions can outsoar that
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  Speaker 1: flight like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms.
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  Speaker 1: Is the vast Man in you. His might binds you
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  Speaker 1: to the earth, His might binds you to the earth.
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  Speaker 1: His fragrance lifts you into space, And in his durability
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  Speaker 1: you are deathless. You have been told that even like
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  Speaker 1: a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
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  Speaker 1: This is but half the truth. You are also as
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  Speaker 1: strong as your strongest link. To measure you by your
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  Speaker 1: smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean, by
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  Speaker 1: the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your
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  Speaker 1: failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy. Ay,
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  Speaker 1: you are like an ocean, and though heavy grounded ships
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  Speaker 1: await the tide upon your shores. Yet even like an ocean,
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  Speaker 1: you cannot hasten your tides. And like the seasons, you
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  Speaker 1: are also. And though in your winter you deny your spring,
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  Speaker 1: yet spring reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and
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  Speaker 1: is not offended. Think not. I say these things in
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  Speaker 1: order that you may say the one to the other.
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  Speaker 1: He praised us well he saw, but the good in us.
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  Speaker 1: I only speak to you in words of that which
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  Speaker 1: you yourselves know in thought. And what is word knowledge
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  Speaker 1: but a shadow of wordless knowledge. Your thoughts and my
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  Speaker 1: words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records
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  Speaker 1: of our yesterdays, and of the ancient days when the
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  Speaker 1: earth knew not us nor herself, and of nights when
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  Speaker 1: earth was upwrought with confusion. Wise men have come to
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  Speaker 1: you to give you of their wisdom. I came to
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  Speaker 1: take of your wisdom. And behold, I have found that
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  Speaker 1: which is greater than wisdom. It is a flame spirit
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  Speaker 1: in you, ever gathering more of itself, while you heedless
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  Speaker 1: of its expansion. Bewail the withering of your days. It
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  Speaker 1: is life in quest of life in bodies that fear
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  Speaker 1: the grave. There are no graves here. These mountains and
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  Speaker 1: plains are a cradle and a stepping stone. Whenever you
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  Speaker 1: pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors,
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  Speaker 1: look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your
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  Speaker 1: children dancing hand in hand. Verily, you often make merry
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  Speaker 1: without knowing. Others have come to you, to whom for
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  Speaker 1: golden promises made unto your faith you have given but
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  Speaker 1: riches and power and glory. Less than a promise have
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  Speaker 1: I given, And yet more generous have you been to me.
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  Speaker 1: You have given me my deeper, thirsting after life. Surely
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  Speaker 1: there is no greater gift to a man than that
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  Speaker 1: which turns all his aims into parching lips, and all
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  Speaker 1: life into a fountain. And in this lies my honor
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  Speaker 1: and my reward, that whenever I come to the fountain
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  Speaker 1: to drink, I find the living water itself thirsty, and
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  Speaker 1: it drinks me while I drink it. Some of you
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  Speaker 1: have deemed me proud and overshy to receive gifts too.
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  Speaker 1: Proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts.
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  Speaker 1: And though I have eaten berries among the hills, when
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  Speaker 1: you would have had me sit at your board and
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  Speaker 1: slept in the portico of the temple, when you would
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  Speaker 1: gladly have sheltered me, Yet was it not your loving
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  Speaker 1: mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food
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  Speaker 1: sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions?
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  Speaker 1: For this I bless you most. You give much, and
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  Speaker 1: know not that you give it all. Verily, the kindness
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  Speaker 1: that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone.
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  Speaker 1: And a good deed that calls itself by tender names
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  Speaker 1: becomes the parent to a curse. And some of you
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  Speaker 1: have called me aloof and drunk with my own a loneness.
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  Speaker 1: And you have said, he holds counsel with the tree
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  Speaker 1: of the forest, but not with men. He sits alone
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  Speaker 1: on hilltops and looks down upon our city. True it
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  Speaker 1: is that I have climbed the hills and walked in
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  Speaker 1: remote places. How could I have seen you, save from
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  Speaker 1: a great height or a great distance. How can one
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  Speaker 1: be indeed near unless he be far? And others among
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  Speaker 1: you called unto me, not in words, And they said, stranger, stranger,
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  Speaker 1: lover of unreachable heights, Why dwell you among the summits
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  Speaker 1: where eagles build their nests. Why seek you the unattainable?
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  Speaker 1: What storms would you trap in your net? And what
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  Speaker 1: vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky? Come and
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  Speaker 1: be one of us. Descend and appease your hunger with
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  Speaker 1: our bread, and quench your thirst with our wine. In
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  Speaker 1: the solitude of their souls, they said these things. But
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  Speaker 1: were there solitude deeper, they would have known that I
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  Speaker 1: sought but the secret of your joy and your pain.
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  Speaker 1: And I hunted only your larger cells that walked the sky.
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  Speaker 1: But the hunter was also the hunted. For many of
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  Speaker 1: my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast.
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  Speaker 1: And the flier was also the creeper. For when my
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  Speaker 1: wings were spread in the sun, their shadow upon the
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  Speaker 1: earth was a turtle. And I, the believer, was also
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  Speaker 1: the doubter. For often have I put my finger in
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  Speaker 1: my own wound, that I might have the greater belief
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  Speaker 1: in you and the greater knowledge of you. And it
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  Speaker 1: is with this belief and this knowledge that I say
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  Speaker 1: you were not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to
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  Speaker 1: houses or fields. That which is you dwells above the
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  Speaker 1: mountain and roves with the wind. It is not a
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  Speaker 1: thing that crawls into the sun for warm or digs
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  Speaker 1: holes into darkness for safety, but a thing free, a
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  Speaker 1: spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether.
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  Speaker 1: If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them.
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  Speaker 1: Vague and nebulous. Is the beginning of all things, but
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  Speaker 1: not their end. And I fain would have you remember
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  Speaker 1: me as a beginning life. And all that lives is
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  Speaker 1: conceived in the mist, and not in the crystal. And
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  Speaker 1: who knows, but a crystal is missed in decay. This
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  Speaker 1: what I have you remember in remembering me. That which
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  Speaker 1: seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest
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  Speaker 1: and most determined. Is it not your breath that is
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  Speaker 1: erected and hardened the structure of your bones? And is
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  Speaker 1: it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt,
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  Speaker 1: that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it.
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  Speaker 1: Could you but see the tides of that breath, you
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  Speaker 1: would cease to see all else. And if you could
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  Speaker 1: hear the whispering of the dream, you would hear no
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  Speaker 1: other sound. But you do not see, nor do you hear.
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  Speaker 1: And it is well. The veil that clouds your eyes
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  Speaker 1: shall be lifted by the hands that wove it, and
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  Speaker 1: the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by
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  Speaker 1: those fingers that kneaded it. And you shall see and
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  Speaker 1: you shall hear. Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness,
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  Speaker 1: nor regret having been deaf, For in that day you
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  Speaker 1: shall know the hidden purposes in all things. And you
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  Speaker 1: shall bless darkness as you would bless light. After saying
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  Speaker 1: these things, he looked about him, and he saw the
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  Speaker 1: pilot of his ship, standing by the helm, and gazing
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  Speaker 1: now at the full sails, and now at the distance.
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  Speaker 1: And he said, patient, over patient is the captain of
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  Speaker 1: my ship. The wind blows, and restless are the sails,
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  Speaker 1: even the rudder begs direction. Yet quietly my captain awaits
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  Speaker 1: my silence. And these my mariners, who have heard the
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  Speaker 1: choir of the greater Sea, they too have heard me patiently.
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  Speaker 1: Now they shall wait no longer. I am ready. The
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  Speaker 1: stream has reached the sea, and once more the great
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  Speaker 1: Mother holds her son against her breast. Fare you, well,
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  Speaker 1: people of orpheles. This day has ended. It is closing
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  Speaker 1: upon us, even as the water lily upon its own tomorrow.
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  Speaker 1: What was given us here we shall keep. And if
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  Speaker 1: it suffices not, then again must we come together and
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  Speaker 1: to gather stretch our hands unto the giver. Forget not
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  Speaker 1: that I shall come back to you a little while,
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  Speaker 1: and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another
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  Speaker 1: body a little while, a moment of rest upon the wind,
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  Speaker 1: and another woman shall bear me. Farewell to you and
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  Speaker 1: the youth I have spent with you. It was but
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  Speaker 1: yesterday we met in a dream. You have sung to
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  Speaker 1: me in my loneness, and I of your longings have
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  Speaker 1: built a tower in the sky. But now our sleep
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  Speaker 1: is fled, and our dream is over, and it is
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  Speaker 1: no longer dawn. The noton tide is upon us, and
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  Speaker 1: our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we
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  Speaker 1: must part. If in the twilight of memory we should
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  Speaker 1: meet once more, we shall speak again together, and you
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  Speaker 1: shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our
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  Speaker 1: hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another
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  Speaker 1: tower in the sky. So saying, he made a signal
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  Speaker 1: to the seamen, and straightway they weigh anchor and cast
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  Speaker 1: the ship loose from its moorings, and they moved eastward,
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  Speaker 1: and a cry came from the people, as from a
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  Speaker 1: single heart, and it rose into the dusk, and was
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  Speaker 1: carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting. Only
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  Speaker 1: Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship until it had
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  Speaker 1: vanished into the mist. And when all the people were dispersed,
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  Speaker 1: she still stood alone upon the sea wall, remembering in
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  Speaker 1: her heart his saying, a little while, a moment of
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  Speaker 1: rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
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  Speaker 1: This is the end of the Prophet by Calil Chibron