Gibran Stories Omnibus

prayed in his heart.
       
     

CRITICS
         
      One nightfall a man travelling on horseback towards the sea reached
an inn by the roadside. He dismounted and, confident in man and night
like all riders towards the sea, he tied his horse to a tree beside the
door and entered into the inn.
      At midnight, when all were asleep, a thief came and stole the
traveller's horse.
      In the morning the man awoke, and discovered that his horse was
stolen. And he grieved for his horse, and that a man had found it in
his heart to steal.
      Then his fellow lodgers came and stood around him and began to talk.
      And the first man said, “How foolish of you to tie your horse
outside the stable.”
      And the second said, “ Still more foolish, without even hobbling the
horse!”
      And the third man said, “It is stupid at best to travel to the sea
on horseback.”
      And the fourth said, “Only the indolent and the slow of foot own
horses.”
      Then the traveller was much astonished. At last he cried, “My
friends, because my horse was stolen, you have hastened one and all to
tell me my faults and my shortcomings. But strange, not one word of
reproach have you uttered about the man who stole my horse.”
       
     

POETS
         
      Four poets were sitting around a bowl of punch that stood on a
table.
      Said the first poet, “Methinks I see with my third eye the fragrance
of this wine hovering in space like a cloud of birds in an enchanted
forest.”
      The second poet raised his head and said, “With my inner ear I can
hear those mist-birds singing. And the melody holds my heart as the
white rose imprisons the bee within her petals.”
      The third poet closed his eyes and stretched his arm upwards, and
said, “I touch them with my hand. I feel their wings, like the breath
of a sleeping fairy, brushing against my fingers.”
      Then the fourth poet rose and lifted up the bowl, and he said,
“Alas, friends! I am too dull of sight and of hearing and of touch. I
cannot see the fragrance of this wine, nor hear its song, nor feel the
beating of its wings. I perceive but the wine itself. Now therefore
must I drink it, that it may sharpen my senses and raise me to your
blissful heights.”
      And putting the bowl to his lips, he drank the punch to the very
last drop.
      The three poets, with their mouths open, looked at him aghast, and
there was a thirsty yet unlyrical hatred in their eyes.
       
     

THE WEATHER-COCK
         
      Said the weather-cock to the wind, “How tedious and monotonous you
are! Can you not blow any other way but in my face? You disturb my
God-given stability.”
      And the wind did not answer. It only laughed in space.

THE KING OF ARADUS
         
      Once the elders of the city of Aradus presented themselves before
the king, and besought of him a decree to forbid to men all wine and
all intoxicants within their city.
      And the king turned his back upon them and went out from them
laughing.
      Then the elders departed in dismay.
      At the door of the palace they met the lord chamberlain. And the
lord chamberlain observed that they were troubled, and he understood
their case.
      Then he said, “Pity, my friends! Had you found the king drunk,
surely he would have granted you your petition.”

OUT OF MY DEEPER HEART
         
      Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skywards.
      Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow.
      At first it was but like a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle, then
as vast as a spring cloud, and then it filled the starry heavens.
      Out of my heart a bird flew skywards. And it waxed larger as it
flew. Yet it left not my heart.
      O my faith, my untamed knowledge, how shall I fly to your height and
see with you man's larger self pencilled upon the sky?
      How shall I turn this sea within me into mist, and move with you in
space immeasurable?
      How can a prisoner within the temple behold its golden domes?
      How shall the heart of a fruit be stretched to envelop the fruit
also?
      O my faith, I am in chains behind these bars of silver and ebony,
and I cannot fly with you.
      Yet out of my