<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=430871" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Farewell XXVIII</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now it was evening. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Almitra the seeress said, &quot;Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken.&quot; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even while the earth sleeps we travel. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, I shall return with the tide, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And not in vain will I seek. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And not unlike the mist have I been. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was boundless in you; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is in the vast man that you are vast, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">His mind binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ay, you are like an ocean, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And like the seasons you are also, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though in your winter you deny your spring, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Think not I say these things in order that you may say the one to the other, &quot;He praised us well. He saw but the good in us.&quot; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And of nights when earth was upwrought with confusion, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom. I came to take of your wisdom: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">There are no graves here. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Verily you often make merry without knowing. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Less than a promise have I given, and yet more generous have you been to me. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">You have given me deeper thirsting after life. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that which turns all his aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in this lies my honour and my reward, - </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And it drinks me while I drink it. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some of you have deemed me proud and over-shy to receive gifts. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">To proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though I have eaten berries among the hill when you would have had me sit at your board, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And slept in the portico of the temple where you would gladly have sheltered me, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For this I bless you most: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">You give much and know not that you give at all. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you have said, &quot;He holds council with the trees of the forest, but not with men. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon our city.&quot; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">How can one be indeed near unless he be far? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And others among you called unto me, not in words, and they said, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Stranger, stranger, lover of unreachable heights, why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why seek you the unattainable? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What storms would you trap in your net, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come and be one of us. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench your thirst with our wine.&quot; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the solitude of their souls they said these things; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret of your joy and your pain, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the hunter was also the hunted: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the flier was also the creeper; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow upon the earth was a turtle. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I the believer was also the doubter; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For often have I put my finger in my own wound that I might have the greater belief in you and the greater knowledge of you. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">If this be vague words, then seek not to clear them. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">This would I have you remember in remembering me: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that building your city and fashioned all there is in it? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you shall see </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you shall hear. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>After saying these things he looked about him, and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he said: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Patient, over-patient, is the captain of my ship. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wind blows, and restless are the sails; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even the rudder begs direction; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And these my mariners, who have heard the choir of the greater sea, they too have heard me patiently. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now they shall wait no longer. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I am ready. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The stream has reached the sea, and once more the great mother holds her son against her breast. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fare you well, people of Orphalese. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">This day has ended. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What was given us here we shall keep, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Forget not that I shall come back to you. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was but yesterday we met in a dream. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>So saying he made a signal to the seamen, and straightaway they weighed anchor and cast the ship loose from its moorings, and they moved eastward. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And a cry came from the people as from a single heart, and it rose the dusk and was carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Only Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the mist. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when all the people were dispersed she still stood alone upon the sea-wall, remembering in her heart his saying, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Khalil+Gibran">Khalil Gibran</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=430871" data-title="The Farewell XXVIII de Khalil Gibran" data-description="And now it was evening. And Almitra the seeress said, &quot;Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken.&quot; And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener? Then he descended the steps of the Temple a..."></div> </div> </div>

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