"Andrew On Prostitutes" 
by Gibran Khalil Gibran 

THE TWO POEMS

Many centuries ago, on a road to Athens, two poets met, and they were glad to see one
another. And one poet asked the other saying, "What have you composed of late, and
how goes it with your lyre?" And the other poet answered and said with pride, "I have
but now finished the greatest of my poems, perchance the greatest poem yet written in
Greek. It is an invocation to Zeus the Supreme." 

Then he took from beneath his cloak a parchment, saying, "Here, behold, I have it with
me, and I would fain read it to you. Come, let us sit in the shade of that white cypress." 

And the poet read his poem. And it was a long poem. And the other poet said in
kindliness, "This is a great poem. It will live through the ages, and in it you shall be
glorified." And the first poet said calmly, "And what have you been writing these late
days?" And the other another, "I have written but little. Only eight lines in
remembrance of a child playing in a garden." And he recited the lines. 

The first poet said, "Not so bad; not so bad." And they parted. And now after two
thousand years the eight lines of the one poet are read in every tongue, and are loved
and cherished. And though the other poem has indeed come down through the ages in
libraries and in the cells of scholars, and though it is remembered, it is neither loved nor
read.