"THE EARTH GODS" 
by Gibran Khalil Gibran


THIRD GOD 


Brothers, my mighty brothers, 
The dancer's feet are drunk with songs. 
They set the air a-throbbing, 
And like doves her hands fly upward. 


FIRST GOD 


The lark calls to the lark, 
But upward the eagle soars, 
Nor tarries to hear the song. 
You would teach me self love fulfilled in man's worship, 
And content with man's servitude. 
But my self love is limitless and without measure. 
I would rise beyond my earthbound mortality 
And throne me upon the heavens. 
My arms woud girdle space and encompass the spheres. 
I would take the starry way for a bow, 
And the comets for arrows, 
And with the infinate would I conquer the infinite. 

But you would not do this, were it in your power. 
For ever as man is to man, 
So are gods to gods. 
Nay, you would bring to my weary heart 
Remembrance of cycles spent in mist, 
When my soul sought itself among the mountains 
And mine eyes pursued their own image in slumbering waters; 
Though my yesterday died in child-birth 
And only silence visits her womb, 
And the wind strewn sand nestles at her breast. 

Oh yesterday, dead yesterday, 
Mother of my chained divinity, 
What super-god caught you in your flight 
And made you breed in the cage? 
What giant sun warmed your bosom 
To give me birth? 
I bless you not, yet I would not curse you; 
For even as you have burdened me with life 
So I have burdened man 
But less cruel have I been. 
I, immortal, made man a passing shadow; 
And you, dying, conceived me deathless. 

Yesterday, dead yesterday, 
Shall you return with distant tomorrow, 
That I may bring you to judgment? 
And will you wake with life's second dawn 
That I may erase your earth-clinging memory from the earth? 
Would that you might rise with all the dead of yore, 
Till the land choke with its own bitter fruit, 
And all the seas be stagnant with the slain, 
And woe upon woe exhaust earth's vain fertility. 


THIRD GOD 


Brother, my sacred brothers, 
The girl has heard the song. 
And now she seeks the singer. 
Like a fawn in glad surprise 
She leaps over rocks and streams 
And turns her to every side. 
Oh, the joy in mortal intent, 
The eye of purpose half-born; 
The smile on lips that quiver 
With foretaste of promised delight! 
What flower has fallen from heaven, 
What flame has risen from hell. 
That startled the heart of silence 
To this breathless joy and fear? 
What dream dreamt we upon the height, 
What thought gave we to the wind 
That woke the drowsing valley 
And made watchful the night? 


SECOND GOD 


The sacred loom is given you, 
And the art to weave the fabric. 
The loom and the art shall be yours for evermore, 
And yours the dark thread and the light, 
And yours the purple and the gold. 
Yet you would grudge yourself a raiment. 
Your hands have spun man's soul 
From living air and fire, 
Yet now you would break the thread, 
And lend your versed fingers to an idle eternity. 


FIRST GOD 


Nay, unto eternity unmoulded I would give my hands, 
And to untrodden fields assign my feet. 
What joy is there in songs oft 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.