Gibran Stories Omnibus

heard,
     
Whose tune the remembering ear arrests
     
Ere the breath yields it to the wind?
     
My heart longs for what my heart conceives not,
     
And unto the unknown where memory dwells not
     
I would command my spirit.
     
Oh, tempt me not with glory possessed,
     
And seek not to comfort me with your dream or mine,
     
For all that I am, and all that there is on earth,
     
And all that shall be, inviteth not my soul.
     
Oh my soul,
     
Silent is thy face,
     
And in Thine eyes the shadows of night are sleeping.
     
But terrible is thy silence,
     
And thou art terrible.
     
     
      THIRD GOD
     
Brothers, my solemn brothers,
     
The girl has found the singer.
     
She sees his raptured face.
     
Panther-like she slips with subtle steps
     
Through rustling vine and fern.
     
And now amid his ardent cries
     
He gazes full on her.
     
Oh my brothers, my heedless brothers,
     
Is it some other god in passion
     
Who has woven this web of scarlet and white?
     
What unbridled star has gone astray?
     
Whose secret keepeth night from morning?
     
And whose hand is upon our world?
     
     
      FIRST GOD
     
Oh my soul, my soul,
     
Thou burning sphere that girdles me,
     
How shall I guide thy course.
     
And unto what space direct thy eagerness?
     
Oh my mateless soul,
     
In thy hunger thou preyest upon thyself,
     
And with thine own tears thou wouldst quench thy thirst;
     
For night gathers not her dew into thy cup,
     
And the day brings thee no fruit.
     
Oh my soul, my soul,
     
Thou grounded ship laden with desire,
     
Whence shall come the wind to fill thy sail,
     
And what higher tide shall release thy rudder?
     
Weighed is thine anchor and thy wings would spread,
     
But the skies are silent above thee,
     
And the still sea mocks at thy immobility.
     
And what hope is there for thee and me?
     
What shifting of worlds, what new purpose in the heavens,
     
That shall claim thee?
     
Does the womb of the virgin infinite
     
Bear the seed of thy Redeemer,
     
One mightier than thy vision
     
Whose hand shall deliver thee from thy captivity?
     
     
      SECOND GOD
     
Hold your importunate cry,
     
And the breath of your burning heart,
     
For deaf is the ear of the infinite,
     
And heedless is the sky.
     
We are the beyond and we are the Most High,
     
And between us and boundless eternity
     
Is naught save our unshaped passion
     
And the motive thereof.
     
You invoke the unknown,
     
And the unknown clad with moving mist
     
Dwells in your own soul.
     
Yea, in your own soul your Redeemer lies asleep,
     
And in sleep sees what your waking eye does not see.
     
And that is the secret of our being.
     
Would you leave the harvest ungathered,
     
In haste to sow again the dreaming furrow?
     
And wherefore spread you your cloud in trackless fields and
desolate,
     
When your own flock is seeking you,
     
And would fain gather in your own shadow?
     
Forbear and look down upon the world.
     
Behold the unweaned children of your love.
     
The earth is your abode, and the earth is your throne;
     
And high beyond man's furtherest hope
     
Your hand upholds his destiny.
     
You would not abandon him
     
Who strives to reach you through gladness and through pain.
     
You would not turn away your face from the need in his eyes.
     
     
      FIRST GOD
     
Does dawn hold the heart of night unto her heart?
     
Or shall the sea heed the bodies of her dead?
     
Like dawn my soul rises within me
     
Naked and unencumbered.
     
And like the unresting sea
     
My heart casts out a perishing wrack of man and earth.
     
I would not cling to that clings to me.
     
But unto that that rises beyond my reach I would arise.
     
     
      THIRD GOD
     
Brothers, behold, my brothers,
     
They meet, two star-bound spirits in the sky encountering.
     
In silence they gaze the one upon the other.
     
He sings no more,
     
And yet his sunburnt throat throbs with the song;
     
And in her limbs the happy dance is stayed
     
But not asleep.
     
Brothers, my strange brothers,
     
The night waxeth deep,
     
And brighter is the moon,
     
And twixt the meadow and the sea
     
A voice in rapture calleth you and me.
     
     
      SECOND GOD
     
To be, to rise, to burn before the burning sun,
     
To live, and to watch the nights of the living
     
As Orion watches us!
     
To face the four winds with a head crowned and high,
     
And to heal the ills of man with our tideless breath!
     
The