THE PROPHET (mystical prose poem) (1923)
- KAHLIL GIBRAN

page 01
'... and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?...
page 02
...Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and thirst...
page 02
...A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. 
Alone must it seek the 'ether'...
page 10
...When love beckons to you, follow him, 
Though his ways are hard and steep. 
And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, 
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you...
page 12
...Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love...
page 12
...Love has no other desires but to fulfil itself
But if you love and must needs have desires,
Let these be your desires;
	To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
	To know the pain of too much tenderness.
	To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
	And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
	To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
	To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
	To return home at even-tide with gratitude;
	And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips...
page 16
...Love one another, but make not a bond of love
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
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Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music...
page 19
...Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts...
page 20
...And he said:
Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts
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You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make'em like you
For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.
You're the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth...
page 24
...And what is fear of need but need itself?
page 28
...Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you...
page 29
...And you receivers - and you're all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives...
page 30
...When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart:
"By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed..."
page 35
...And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving...
page 36
...Your joy is your sorrow unmasked
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When you're joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy...
page 37
...Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you're empty are you at standstill and balanced...
page 42
...Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean...
And when the unclean shall be no more,
What were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?...
page 49
...And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all...
page 50
...The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder...
page 50
...You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the Sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together...
page 52
...And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds ?...
page 56
...For you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment...
page 58
...And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom...
page 61
...Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding...
page 67
...No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge...
page 69
...Your friend is your needs answered...
page 70
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live...
page 71
...You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thought...
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And in much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered...
page 73
...You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable
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Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and to-morrow is to-day's dream...
page 74
...And is not time even as love is undivided and paceless?
But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons
And let to-day embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing...
page 75
...For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily, when good is hungry it seeks food even in the dark caves, and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters...
You are good when you're one with yourself...
page 77
...You are good in countless ways, and you're not evil when you're not good.
You're only loitering and sluggard...
page 82
"...We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they're born in us!"
"Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all"...
page 84
...But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement...
page 85
...Think you the spirit is a still pool which you trouble with a staff?...
page 88
...And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy...
page 89
...Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face...
But you're life and you're the veil...
page 90
...He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage
The freest song comes not through bars and wires
page 91
...And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children...
page 93
...If you would indeed behold the spirit death, open your heart wide unto the body of life
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
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page 94
And what's it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
page 97
...We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we've ended another day;
and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us...
page 102
...To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam...
page 103
...And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?...
page 106
...Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone...
page 108
...If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them...
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end...