Collected Poetical Works of Kahlil Gibran

by Kahlil Gibran

To face the four winds with a head crowned and high,

  And to heal the ills of man with our tideless breath!

  The tentmaker sits darkly at his loom,

  And the potter turns his wheel unaware;

  But we, the sleepless and the knowing,

  We are released from guessing and from chance.

  We pause not nor do we wait for thought.

  We are beyond all restless questioning.

  Be content and let the dreaming go.

  Like rivers let us flow to ocean

  Unwounded by the edges of the rocks;

  And when we reach her heart and are merged,

  No more shall we wrangle and reason of tomorrow.

  FIRST GOD

  Oh, this ache of ceaseless divining,

  This vigil of guiding the day unto twilight,

  And the night unto dawn;

  This tide of ever remembering and forgetting;

  This ever sowing destinies and reaping but hopes;

  This changeless lifting of self from dust to mist,

  Only to long for dust, and to fall down with longing unto dust,

  And still with greater longing to seek the mist again.

  And this timeless measuring of time.

  Must my soul needs to be a sea whose currents forever confound one another,

  Or the sky where the warring winds turn hurricane?

  Were I man, a blind fragment,

  I could have met it with patience.

  Or if I were the Supreme Godhead,

  Who fills the emptiness of man and of gods,

  I would be fulfilled.

  But you and I are neither human,

  Nor the Supreme above us.

  We are but twilights ever rising and ever fading

  Between horizon and horizon.

  We are but gods holding a world and held by it,

  Fates that sound the trumpets

  Whilst the breath and the music come from beyond.

  And I rebel.

  I would exhaust myself to emptiness.

  I would dissolve myself afar from your vision,

  And from the memory of this silent youth, our younger brother,

  Who sits beside us gazing into yonder valley,

  And though his lips move, utters not a word.

  THIRD GOD

  I speak, my unheeding brothers,

  I do indeed speak,

  But you hear only your own words.

  I bid you see your glory and mine,

  But you turn, and close your eyes,

  And rock your thrones.

  Ye sovereigns who would govern the above world and the world beneath,

  God self-bent, whose yesterday is ever jealous of your tomorrow,

  Self-weary, who would unleash your temper with speech

  And lash our orb with thunderings!

  Your feud is but the sounding of an Ancient Lyre

  Whose strings have been half forgotten by His fingers

  Who has Orion for a harp and the Pleiades for cymbals.

  Even now, while you are muttering and rumbling,

  His harp rings, His cymbals clash,

  And I beseech you hear his song.

  Behold, man and woman,

  Flame to flame,

  In white ecstasy.

  Roots that suck at the breast of purple earth,

  Flame flowers at the breasts of the sky.

  And we are the purple breast,

  And we are the enduring sky.

  Our soul, even the soul of life, your soul and mine,

  Dwells this night in a throat enflamed,

  And garments the body of a girl with beating waves.

  Your sceptre cannot sway this destiny,

  Your weariness is but ambition.

  This and all is wiped away

  In the passion of a man and a maid.

  SECOND GOD

  Yea, what of this love of man and woman?

  See how the east wind dances with her dancing feet,

  And the west wind rises singing with his song.

  Behold our sacred purpose now enthroned,

  In the yielding of a spirit that sings to a body that dances.

  FIRST GOD

  I will not turn my eyes downward to the conceit of earth,

  Nor to her children in their slow agony that you call love.

  And what is love,

  But the muffled drum and leads the long procession of sweet uncertainty

  To another slow agony?

  I will not look downward.

  What is there to behold

  Save a man and a woman in the forest that grew to trap them

  That they might renounce self

  And parent creatures for our unborn tomorrow?

  THIRD GOD

  Oh, the affliction of knowing,

  The starless veil of prying and questioning

  Which we have laid upon the world;

  And the challenge to human forbearance!

  We would lay under a stone a waxen shape

  And say, It is a thing of clay,

  And in clay let it find its end.

  We would hold in our hands a white flame

  And say in our heart,

  It is a fragment of ourselves returning,

  A breath of our breath that had escaped,

  And now haunts our hands and lips for more fragrance.

  Earth gods, my brothers,

  High upon the mountain,

  We are still earth-bound,

  Through man desiring the golden hours of man’s destiny.

  Shall our wisdom ravish beauty from his eyes?

  Shall our measures subdue his passion to stillness,

  Or to our own passion?

  What would your armies of reasoning

  Where love encamps his host?

  They who are conquered by love,

  And upon whose bodies love’s chariot ran

  From sea to mountain

  And again form mountain to the sea,

  Stand even now in a shy half-embrace.

  Petal unto petal they breathe the sacred perfume,

  Soul to soul they find the soul of life,

  And upon their eyelids lies a prayer

  Unto you and unto me.

  Love is a night bent down to a bower anointed,

  A sky turned meadow, and all the stars to fireflies.

  True it is, we are the beyond,

  And we are the most high.

  But love is beyond our questioning,

  And love outsoars our song.

  SECOND GOD

  Seek you a distant orb,

  And would not consider this star

  Where your sinews are planted?

  There is no center in space

  Save where self is wedded to self,

  And beauty filling our hands to shame our lips.

  The most distant is the most near.

  And where beauty is, there are all things.

  Oh, lofty dreaming brother,

  Return to us from time’s dim borderland!

  Unlace your feet from no-where and no-when,

  And dwell with us in this security

  Which your hand intertwined with ours

  Has builded stone upon stone.

  Cast off your mantle of brooding,

  And comrade us, masters of the young earth green and warm.

  FIRST GOD

  Eternal Altar! Wouldst thou indeed this night

  A god for sacrifice?

  Now then, I come, and coming I offer up

  My passion and my pain.

  Lo, there is the dancer, carved out of our ancient eagerness,

  And the singer is crying mine own songs unto the wind.

  And in that dancing and in that singing

  A god is slain within me.

  My god-heart within my human ribs

  Shouts to my god-heart in mid-air.

  The human pit that wearied me calls to divinity.

  The beauty that we ha
ve sought from the beginning

  Calls unto divinity.

  I heed, and I have measured the call,

  And now I yield.

  Beauty is a path that leads to self self-slain.

  Beat your strings

  I will to walk the path.

  It stretches ever to another dawn.

  THIRD GOD

  Love triumphs.

  The white and green of love beside a lake,

  And the proud majesty of love in tower or balcony;

  Love in a garden or in the desert untrodden,

  Love is our lord and master.

  It is not a wanton decay of the flesh,

  Nor the crumbling of desire

  When desire and self are wrestling;

  Nor is it flesh that takes arms against the spirit.

  Love rebels not.

  It only leaves the trodden way of ancient destinies for the sacred grove,

  To sing and dance its secret to eternity.

  Love is youth with chains broken,

  Manhood made free from the sod,

  And womanhood warmed by the flame

  And shining with the light of heaven deeper than our heaven.

  Love is a distant laughter in the spirit.

  It is a wild assault that hushes you to your awakening.

  It is a new dawn unto the earth,

  A day not yet achieved in your eyes or mine,

  But already achieved in its own greater heart.

  Brothers, my brothers,

  The bride comes from the heart of dawn,

  And the bridegroom from the sunset.

  There is a wedding in the valley.

  A day too vast for recording.

  SECOND GOD

  Thus has it been since the first morn

  Discharged the plains to hill and vale,

  And thus shall it be to the last even-tide.

  Our roots have brought forth the dancing branches in the valley,

  And we are the flowering of the song-scent that rises to the heights.

  Immortal and mortal, twin rivers calling to the sea.

  There is no emptiness between call and call,

  But only in the ear.

  Time maketh our listening more certain,

  And giveth it more desire.

  Only doubt in mortal hushes the sound.

  We have outsoared the doubt.

  Man is a child of our younger heart.

  Man is god in slow arising;

  And betwixt his joy and his pain

  Lies our sleeping, and the dreaming thereof.

  FIRST GOD

  Let the singer cry, and let the dancer whirl her feet

  And let me be content awhile.

  Let my soul be serene this night.

  Perchance I may drowse, and drowsing

  Behold a brighter world

  And creatures more starry supple to my mind.

  THIRD GOD

  Now I will rise and strip me of time and space,

  And I will dance in that field untrodden,

  And the dancer’s feet will move with my feet;

  And I will sing in that higher air,

  And a human voice will throb within my voice.

  We shall pass into the twilight;

  Perchance to wake to the dawn of another world.

  But love shall stay,

  And his finger-marks shall not be erased.

  The blessed forge burns,

  The sparks rise, and each spark is a sun.

  Better it is for us, and wiser,

  To seek a shadowed nook and sleep in our earth divintiy,

  And let love, human and frail, command the coming day.

  THE WANDERER (1932)

  CONTENTS

  THE WANDERER

  GARMENTS

  THE EAGLE AND THE SKYLARK

  THE LOVE SONG

  TEARS AND LAUGHTER

  AT THE FAIR

  THE TWO PRINCESSES

  THE LIGHTNING FLASH

  THE HERMIT AND THE BEASTS

  THE PROPHET AND THE CHILD

  THE PEARL

  BODY AND SOUL

  THE KING

  UPON THE SAND

  THE THREE GIFTS

  PEACE AND WAR

  THE DANCER

  THE TWO GUARDIAN ANGELS

  THE STATUE

  THE EXCHANGE

  LOVE AND HATE

  DREAMS

  THE MADMAN

  THE FROGS

  LAWS AND LAW-GIVING

  YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

  THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE COBBLER

  BUILDERS OF BRIDGES

  THE FIELD OF ZAAD

  THE GOLDEN BELT

  THE RED EARTH

  THE FULL MOON

  THE HERMIT PROPHET

  THE OLD, OLD WINE

  THE TWO POEMS

  LADY RUTH

  THE MOUSE AND THE CAT

  THE CURSE

  THE POMEGRANATES

  GOD AND MANY GODS

  SHE WHO WAS DEAF

  THE QUEST

  THE SCEPTRE

  THE PATH

  THE WHALE AND THE BUTTERFLY

  THE SHADOW

  PEACE CONTAGIOUS

  SEVENTY

  FINDING GOD

  THE RIVER

  THE TWO HUNTERS

  THE OTHER WANDERER

  THE WANDERER

  I met him at the crossroads, a man with but a cloak and a staff, and a veil of pain upon his face. And we greeted one another, and I said to him, “Come to my house and be my guest.”

  And he came.

  My wife and my children met us at the threshold, and he smiled at them, and they loved his coming.

  Then we all sat together at the board and we were happy with the man for there was a silence and a mystery in him.

  And after supper we gathered to the fire and I asked him about his wanderings.

  He told us many a tale that night and also the next day, but what I now record was born out of the bitterness of his days though he himself was kindly, and these tales are of the dust and patience of his road.

  And when he left us after three days we did not feel that a guest had departed but rather that one of us was still out in the garden and had not yet come in.

  GARMENTS

  Upon a day Beauty and Ugliness met on the shore of a sea. And they said to one another, “Let us bathe in the sea.”

  Then they disrobed and swam in the waters. And after a while Ugliness came back to shore and garmented himself with the garments of Beauty and walked away.

  And Beauty too came out of the sea, and found not her raiment, and she was too shy to be naked, therefore she dressed herself with the raiment of Ugliness. And Beauty walked her way.

  And to this very day men and women mistake the one for the other.

  Yet some there are who have beheld the face of Beauty, and they know her notwithstanding her garments. And some there be who know the face of Ugliness, and the cloth conceals him not from their eyes.

  THE EAGLE AND THE SKYLARK

  A skylark and an eagle met on a rock upon a high hill. The skylark said, “Good morrow to you, Sir.” And the eagle looked down upon him and said faintly, “Good morrow.”

  And the skylark said, “I hope all things are well with you, Sir.”

  “Aye,” said the eagle, “all is well with us. But do you not know that we are the king of birds, and that you shall not address us before we ourselves have spoken?”

  Said the skylark, “Methinks we are of the same family.”

  The eagle looked upon him with disdain and he said, “Who ever has said that you and I are of the same family?”

  Then said the skylark, “But I would remind you of this, I can fly even as high as you, and I can sing and give delight to the other creatures of this earth. And you give neither pleasure nor delight.”

  Then the eagle was angered, and he said, “Pleasure and delight! You little presumptuous creature! With one thrust of my beak I could destroy y
ou. You are but the size of my foot.”

  Then the skylark flew up and alighted upon the back of the eagle and began to pick at his feathers. The eagle was annoyed, and he flew swift and high that he might rid himself of the little bird. But he failed to do so. At last he dropped back to that very rock upon the high hill, more fretted than ever, with the little creature still upon his back, and cursing the fate of the hour.

  Now at that moment a small turtle came by and laughed at the sight, and laughed so hard the she almost turned upon her back.

  And the eagle looked down upon the turtle and he said, “You slow creeping thing, ever one with the earth, what are you laughing at?”

  And the turtle said, “Why I see that you are turned horse, and that you have a small bird riding you, but the small bird is the better bird.”

  And the eagle said to her, “Go you about your business. This is a family affair between my brother, the lark, and myself.”

  THE LOVE SONG

  A poet once wrote a love song and it was beautiful. And he made many copies of it, and sent them to his friends and his acquaintances, both men and women, and even to a young woman whom he had met but once, who lived beyond the mountains.

  And in a day or two a messenger came from the young woman bringing a letter. And in the letter she said, “Let me assure you, I am deeply touched by the love song that you have written to me. Come now, and see my father and my mother, and we shall make arrangements for the betrothal.”

  And the poet answered the letter, and he said to her, “My friend, it was but a song of love out of a poet’s heart, sung by every man to every woman.”

  And she wrote again to him saying, “Hypocrite and liar in words! From this day unto my coffin-day I shall hate all poets for your sake.”

  TEARS AND LAUGHTER

  Upon the bank of the Nile at eventide, a hyena met a crocodile and they stopped and greeted one another.

  The hyena spoke and said, “How goes the day with you, Sir?”

  And the crocodile answered saying, “It goes badly with me. Sometimes in my pain and sorrow I weep, and then the creatures always say, ‘They are but crocodile tears.’ And this wounds me beyond all telling.”

  Then the hyena said, “You speak of your pain and your sorrow, but think of me also, for a moment. I gaze at the beauty of the world, its wonders and its miracles, and out of sheer joy I laugh even as the day laughs. And then the people of the jungle say, ‘It is but the laughter of a hyena.’”

  AT THE FAIR

  There came to the Fair a girl from the country-side, most comely. There was a lily and a rose in her face. There was a sunset in her hair, and dawn smiled upon her lips.