Less than a promise have I given, and yet more generous have you been to me. Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory. Verily you often make merry without knowing. Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand. These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone. It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave. While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself, I came to take of your wisdom:Īnd behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom. Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom. Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays,Īnd of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself,Īnd of nights when earth was upwrought with confusion. I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.Īnd what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge? Think not I say these things are in order that you may say the one to the other, “He praised us well.
Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended. To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.Īnd though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shoes, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.Īnd though in your winter you deny your spring, To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam. You are also as strong as your strongest link. You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. His might binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless. Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms in the vast man in you. What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight? He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.Īnd in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.įor what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere? The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires.Īnd to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers.Īnd when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing.īut sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me. In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses,Īnd your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all.Īy, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams.Īnd oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains. The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return. Man’s needs change, but not his love, nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs. I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness Īnd if this day is not a fulfilment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. It aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts. But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in you memory, then I will come again,Īnd with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.Īnd though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.īrief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken. We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck.Īnd facing the people again, he raised his voice and said: Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And Almitra the seeress said, Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken.Īnd he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?
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