"You
delight in laying down laws, Yet you delight more in breaking
them.
Like
children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy
and then destroy them with laughter. But while you build your
sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore, And when
you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you. Verily the ocean
laughs always with the innocent.
But
what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws
are not sand-towers, But to whom life is a rock, and the law
a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?
What
of the cripple who hates dancers?
What
of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the
forest stray and vagrant things?
What
of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others
naked and shameless?
And
of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed
and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and
all feasters law-breakers?
What
shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight,
but with their backs to the sun? They see only their shadows,
and their shadows are their laws. And what is the sun to them
but a caster of shadows? And what is it to acknowledge the laws
but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But
you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can
hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall
direct your course? What man's law shall bind you if you break
your yoke but upon no man's prison door?
What
laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's
iron chains? And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if
you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path?
People
of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the
strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to
sing?"
Authors
Details: Kahlil Gibran is a poet, philosopher
and artist. His poetry has been transalated into more than
twenty languages.
He was born in Lebanon in 1883 and he died in 1931. |
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