The Prophet

Copyright 1923 by Kahlil Gibran All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Published September 1923
The Twelve Illustrations In This Volume Are Reproduced From Original Drawings By The Author
“His power came from some great reservoir of spiritual life else it could not have been so universal and so potent, but the majesty and beauty of the language with which he clothed it were all his own?”
—Claude Bragdon
The Madman. 1918 Twenty Drawings. 1919 The Forerunner. 1920 The Prophet. 1923 Sand and Foam. 1926 Jesus the Son of Man. 1928 The Forth Gods. 1931 The Wanderer. 1932 The Garden of the Prophet 1933 Prose Poems. 1934 Nymphs of the Valley. 1948
Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.
And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld his ship coming with the mist.
Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.
But as he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart:
How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city. Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?
Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.