"THE EARTH GODS" 
by Gibran Khalil Gibran


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 tentmaker sits darkly at his loom, 
And the potter turns his wheel unaware; 
But we, the sleepless and the knowing, 
We are released from guessing and from chance. 
We pause not nor do we wait for thought. 
We are beyond all restless questioning. 
Be content and let the dreaming go. 
Like rivers let us flow to ocean 
Unwounded by the edges of the rocks; 
And when we reach her heart and are merged, 
No more shall we wrangle and reason of tomorrow. 


FIRST GOD 


Oh, this ache of ceaseless divining, 
This vigil of guiding the day unto twilight, 
And the night unto dawn; 
This tide of ever remembering and forgetting; 
This ever sowing destinies and reaping but hopes; 
This changeless lifting of self from dust to mist, 
Only to long for dust, and to fall down with longing unto dust, 
And still with greater longing to seek the mist again. 
And this timeless measuring of time. 
Must my soul needs to be a sea whose currents forever confound one another, 
Or the sky where the warring winds turn hurricane? 

Were I man, a blind fragment, 
I could have met it with patience. 
Or if I were the Supreme Godhead, 
Who fills the emptiness of man and of gods , 
I would be fulfilled. 
But you and I are neither human, 
Nor the Supreme above us. 
We are but twilights ever rising and ever fading 
Between horizon and horizon. 
We are but gods holding a world and held by it, 
Fates that sound the trumpets 
Whilst the breath and the music come from beyond. 
And I rebel. 
I would exhaust myself to emptiness. 
I would dissolve myself afar from your vision, 
And from the memory of this silent youth, our younger brother, 
Who sits beside us gazing into yonder valley, 
And though his lips move, utters not a word.