The Prophet
weeping, until you shall come laughing.
When you pray you rise to meet in the
air those who are praying at that very
hour, and whom save in prayer you
may not meet.
Therefore let your visit to that temple
invisible be for naught but ecstasy and
sweet communion.
For if you should enter the temple for
no other purpose than asking you shall
not receive:
And if you should enter into it to
humble yourself you shall not be lifted:
Or even if you should enter into it to
beg for the good of others you shall not
be heard.
It is enough that you enter the temple
invisible.
*****
I cannot teach you how to pray in words.
God listens not to your words save when
He Himself utters them through your
lips.
And I cannot teach you the prayer of the
seas and the forests and the mountains.
But you who are born of the
mountains and the forests and the seas
can find their prayer in your heart,
And if you but listen in the stillness
of the night you shall hear them saying
in silence,
“Our God, who art our winged self, it is
thy will in us that willeth.
It is thy desire in us that desireth.
It is thy urge in us that would turn our
nights, which are thine, into days which
are thine also.
We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou
knowest our needs before they are born
in us:
Thou art our need; and in giving us more
of thyself thou givest us all.”
***** *****
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 chastisement.
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.
***** *****
And a poet said, Speak to us of
_Beauty_.
And he answered:
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 you are the
mirror.
***** *****
And an old priest said, Speak to us
of _Religion_.
And he said:
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all
reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor
reflection, but a wonder and a surprise
ever springing in the soul, even while
the hands hew the stone or tend the
loom?
Who can separate his faith from
his actions, or his belief from his
occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him,
saying, “This for God and this for
myself; This for my soul, and this other
for my body?”
All your hours are wings that beat
through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best
garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes
in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics
imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars
and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window,
to open but also to shut, has not yet
visited the house of his soul whose
windows are from dawn to dawn.
*****
Your daily life is your temple and your
religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you
your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the
mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in
necessity or for delight.
For in revery you cannot rise above your
achievements nor fall lower than your
failures.
And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than
their hopes nor humble yourself lower
than their despair.
*****
And if you would know God be not
therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see
Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him
walking in the cloud, outstretching His
arms in the lightning and descending in
rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers,
then rising and waving His hands in
trees.
***** *****
Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of _Death_.
And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you
seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind
unto the day cannot unveil the mystery
of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit
of death, open your heart wide unto the
body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the
river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires
lies your silent knowledge of the
beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow
your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden
the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the
shepherd when he stands before the king
whose hand is to be laid upon him in
honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his
trembling, that he shall wear the mark
of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his
trembling?
*****
For what is it to die but to stand naked
in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but
to free the breath from its restless
tides, that it may rise and expand and
seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of
silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain
top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your
limbs, then shall you truly dance.
And now it was evening.
And Almitra the seeress said, Blessed be
this day and this place and your spirit
that has spoken.
And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was
I not also a listener?
*****
Then he descended the steps of the
Temple and all the people followed him.
And he reached his ship and stood upon
the deck.
And facing the people again, he raised
his voice and said:
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me
leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I
must go.
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.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
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.
*****
Brief were my days among you, and
briefer still the words I have spoken.
But should my voice fade in your ears,
and my love vanish in your memory, then
I will come again,
And with a richer heart and lips more
yielding to the spirit will I speak.
Yea, I shall return with the tide,
And though death may hide me, and the
greater silence enfold me, yet again
will I seek your understanding.
And not in vain will I seek.
If aught I have said is truth, that
truth shall reveal itself in a clearer
voice, and in words more kin to your
thoughts.
I go with the wind, people of
Orphalese, but not down into emptiness;
And if this day is not a fulfilment
of your needs and my love, then let it
be a promise till another day.
Man’s needs change, but not his love,
nor his desire that his love should
satisfy his needs.
Know therefore, that from the greater
silence I shall return.
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.
And not unlike the mist have I been.
In the stillness of the night I have
walked in your streets, and my spirit
has entered your houses,