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ON PLEASURE 

    Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year,
    came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure."
    And he answered, saying:
    Pleasure is a freedom song,
    But it is not freedom.
    It is the blossoming of your desires,
    But it is not their fruit.
    It is a depth calling unto a height,
    But it is not the deep nor the high
    It is the caged taking wing,
    But it is not space encompassed.
    Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.
    And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart;

    yet I would not have you lose
    your hearts in the singing.
    Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all,
    and they are judged and rebuked.
    I would not judge nor rebuke them.
    I would have them seek.
    For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone:
    Seven are her sisters, and the least of them
    is more beautiful than pleasure.
    Have you not heard of the man
    who was digging in the earth
    for roots and found a treasure?
    And some of your elders remember pleasures
    with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
    But regret is the beclouding of the mind
    and not its chastise
    They should remember their pleasures with gratitude,
    as they would the harvest of a summer.
    Yet if it comforts them to regret,
    let them be comforted.
    And there are among you those who are
    neither young to seek nor old to remember;
    And in their fear of seeking and remembering
    they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect
    the spirit or offend against it.
    But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
    And thus they too find a treasure though
    they dig for roots with quivering hands.
    But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
    Shall the nightingale offend
    the stillness of the night,
    or the firefly the stars?
    And shall your flame or your smoke
    burden the wind?
    Think you the spirit is a still pool
    which you can trouble with a staff?
    Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure
    you do but store the desire
    in the recesses of your being.
    Who knows but that which seems omitted today,
    waits for tomorrow?
    Even your body knows its heritage
    and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
    And your body is the harp of your soul,
    And it is yours to bring forth sweet music
    from it or confused sounds.
    And now you ask in your heart,
    "How shall we distinguish that
    which is good in pleasure from that
    which is not good?"
    Go to your fields and your gardens,
    and you shall learn that it is
    the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
    But it is also the pleasure of the flower
    to yield its honey to the bee.
    For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
    And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
    And to both, bee and flower,
    the giving and the receiving of pleasure
    is a need and an ecstasy.
    People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures
    like the flowers and the bees.

    Khalil Gebran
ON BEAUTY

 

    And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty."
    Where shall you seek beauty,
    and how shall you find her unless
    she herself be your way and your guide?
    And how shall you speak of her
    except she be the weaver of your speech?
    The aggrieved and the injured say,
    "Beauty is kind and gentle.
    Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory
    she walks among us."
    And the passionate say,

    "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
    Like the tempest she shakes

    the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
    The tired and the weary say,
    "beauty is of soft whisperings.
    She speaks in our spirit.
    Her voice yields to our silences
    like a faint light
    that quivers in fear of the shadow.
    But the restless say,
    "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
    And with her cries came the sound of hoofs,
    and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
    At night the watchmen of the city say
    "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."
    And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say,
    "we have seen her leaning over the earth
    from the windows of the sunset."
    In winter say the snow-bound,
    "She shall come with the spring leaping
    upon the hills."
    And in the summer heat the reapers say,
    "We have seen her dancing
    with the autumn leaves,
    and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
    All these things have you said of beauty.
    Yet in truth you spoke not of her
    but of needs unsatisfied,
    And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
    It is not a mouth thirsting
    nor an empty hand stretched forth,
    But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
    It is not the image you would see
    nor the song you would hear,
    But rather an image you see
    though you close your eyes
    and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
    It is not the sap within the furrowed bark,
    nor a wing attached to a claw,
    But rather a garden for ever in bloom
    and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
    People of Orphalese, beauty is life
    when life unveils her holy face.
    But you are life and you are the veil.
    Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
    But you are eternity and your are the mirror.
                                           Khalil Gebran


This strange world: