The Garden of the Prophet "part 7" 
by Gibran Khalil Gibran 
.
And on the first day of the week when the sounds of the temple bells sought their ears, one
spoke and said: 

"Master, we hear much talk of God hereabout. What say you of God, and who is He in very
truth?" 

And he stood before them like a young tree, fearless of wind or tempest, and he answered
saying: 

"Think now, my comrades and beloved, of a heart that contains all your hearts, a love that
encompasses all your loves, a spirit that envelops all your spirits, a voice enfolding all your
voices, and a silence deeper than all your silences, and timeless. 

"Seek now to perceive in your selffulness a beauty more enchanting than all things beautiful,
a song more vast than the songs of the sea and the forest, a majesty seated upon the throne
for which Orion is but a footstool, holding a sceptre in which the Pleiades are naught save the
glimmer of dewdrops. 

"You have sought always only food and shelter, a garment and a staff; seek now One who is
neither an aim for your arrows nor a stony cave to shield you from the elements. "And if my
words are a rock and a riddle, then seek, none the less, that your hearts may be broken, and
that your questionings may bring you unto the love and the wisdom of the Most High, whom
men call God." 


And they were silent, every one, and they were perplexed in their heart; and Almustafa was
moved with compassion for them, and he gazed with tenderness upon them and said: "Let us
speak rather of the gods, your neighbours, and of your brothers, the elements that move about
your houses and your fields. "You would rise up in fancy unto the cloud, and you deem it
height; and you would pass over the vast sea and claim it to be distance. But I say unto you
that when you sow a seed in the earth, you reach a greater height; and when you hail the
beauty of the morning to your neighbour, you cross a greater sea. "Too often do you sing God,
the Infinite, and yet in truth you hear not the song. Would that you might 
listen to the song-birds, and to the leaves that forsake the branch when the wind passes by,
and forget not, my friends, that these sing only when they are separated from the branch! 

"Again I bid you to speak not so freely of God, who is your All, but speak rather and
understand one another, neighbour unto neighbour, a god unto a god. "For what shall feed
the fledgling in the nest if the mother bird flies skyward? And what anemone in the fields shall
be fulfilled unless it be husbanded by a bee from another anemone? 

"It is only when you are lost in your smaller selves that you seek the sky which you call God.
Would that you might find paths into your vast selves; would that you might be less idle and
pave the roads! "My mariners and my friends, it were wiser to speak less of God, whom we
cannot understand, and more of each other, whom we may understand. Yet I would have you
know that we are the breath and the fragrance of God. We are God, in leaf, in flower, and
oftentimes in fruit." 

And on a morning when the sun was high, one of the disciples, one of those three who had
played with him in childhood, approached him saying: "Master, my garment is worn, and I
have no other. Give me leave to go unto the market-place and bargain that perchance I may
procure me new raiment." And Almustafa looked upon the young man, and he said: "Give me
your garment." And he did so and stood naked in the noonday. 

And Almustafa said in a voice that was like a young steed running upon a road: 

"Only the naked live in the sun. Only the artless ride the wind. And he alone who loses his way
a thousand times shall have a home-coming. "The angels are tired of the clever. And it was
but yesterday that an angel said to me: 'We created hell for those who glitter. What else but
fire can erase a shining surface and melt a thing to its core?' "And I said: 'But in creating hell
you created devils to govern hell.' But the angel answered: 'Nay, hell is governed by those
who do not yield to fire.' "Wise angel! He knows the ways of men and the ways of half-men.
He is one of the seraphim who come to minister unto the prophets when they are tempted by
the clever. And no doubt he smiled when the prophets smile, and weeps also when they
weep. 

"My friends and my mariners, only the naked live in the sun. Only the rudderless can sail the
greater sea. Only he who is dark with the night shall wake with the dawn, and only he who
sleeps with the roots under the snow shall reach the spring. 

"For you are even like roots, and like roots are you simple, yet you have wisdom from the
earth. And you are silent, yet you have within your unborn branches the choir of the four
winds. "You are frail and you are formless, yet you are the beginning of giant oaks, and of the
half-pencilled patterned of the willows against the sky. 

"Once more I say, you are but roots betwixt the dark sod and the moving heavens. And
oftentimes have I seen you rising to dance with the light, but I have also seen you shy. All
roots are shy. They have hidden their hearts so long that they know not what to do with their
hearts. "But May shall come, and May is a restless virgin, and she shall mother the hills and
plains."