The Works of Gibran

The New Frontier (1925)

There are in the Middle East today two challenging ideas: old and new. The old ideas will vanish because they are weak and exhausted. There is in the Middle East an awakening that defies slumber. This awakening will conquer because the sun is its leader and the dawn is its army.

In the fields of the Middle East, which have been a large burial ground, stand the youth of Spring calling the occupants of the sepulchers to rise and march toward the new frontiers. When the Spring sings its hymns the dead of the winter rise, shed their shrouds and march forward.

There is on the horizon of the Middle East a new awakening; it is growing and expanding; it is reaching and engulfing all sensitive, intelligent souls; it is penetrating and gaining all the sympathy of noble hearts.

The Middle East, today, has two masters. one is deciding, ordering, being obeyed; but he is at the point of death. But the other one is silent in his conformity to law and order, calmly awaiting justice; he is a powerful giant who knows his own strength, confident in his existence and a believer in his destiny.

There are today, in the Middle East, two men: one of the past and one of the future. Which one are you? Come close, let me look at you and let me be assured by your appearance and your conduct if you are one of those coming into the light or going into the darkness.

Come and tell me who and what are you.

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; is the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.

Are you a merchant utilizing the need of society for the necessities of life, for monopoly and exorbitant profit? Or a sincere, hard-working and diligent man facilitating the exchange between the weaver and the farmer? Are you charging a reasonable profit as a middleman between supply and demand? If you are the first, then you are a criminal whether you live in a palace or a prison. If you are the second, then you are a charitable man whether you are thanked or denounced by people.

Are you a religious leader, weaving for your body a gown out of the ignorance of the people, fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their hearts and pretending to hate the devil merely to live upon his income? Or are you a devout and a pious man who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depth of his own soul a ladder to the eternal soul that directs the world? If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God even if you fast by day and pray by night. If you are the second, then you are a violet in the garden of truth even though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved.

Are you a newspaperman who sells his idea and principle in the slave market, who lives on the misery of people like a buzzard which descends only upon a decaying carcass? Or are you a teacher on the platform of the city gathering experience from life and presenting it to the people as sermons you have learned? If you are the first, then you are a sore and an ulcer. If you are the second, then you are a balsam and a medicine.

Are you a governor who denigrates himself before those who appoint him and denigrates those whom he is to govern, who never raises a hand unless it is to reach into pockets and who does not take a step unless it is for greed? Or are you a faithful servant who serves only the welfare of the people? If you are the first, then you are as a tare in the threshing floor of the nations; and if the second, then you are a blessing upon its granaries.

Are you a husband who allows for himself what he disallows for his wife, living in abandonment with the key of her prison in his boots, gorging himself with his favorite food while she sits, by herself, before an empty dish? Or are you a companion, taking no action except hand in hand, nor doing anything unless she gives her thoughts and opinions, and sharing with her your happiness and success? If you are the first, then you are a remnant of a tribe which, still dressing in the skins of animals, vanished long before leaving the caves; and if you are the second, then you are a leader in a nation moving in the dawn toward the light of justice and wisdom.

Are you a searching writer full of self-admiration, keeping his head in the valley of a dusty past, where the ages discarded the remnant of its clothes and useless ideas? Or are you a clear thinker examining what is good and useful for society and spending your life in building what is useful and destroying what is harmful? If you are the first, then you are feeble and stupid, and if you are the second, then you are bread for the hungry and water for the thirsty.

Are you a poet, who plays the tambourine at the doors of emirs, or the one who throws the flowers during weddings and who walks in processions with a sponge full of warm water in his mouth, a sponge to be pressed by his tongue and lips as soon as he reaches the cemetery? Or have you a gift which God has placed in your hands on which to play heavenly melodies which draw our hearts toward the beautiful in life? If you are the first, then you are a juggler who evokes in our soul that which is contrary to what you intend. If you are the second, then you are love in our hearts and a vision in our minds.

In the Middle East there are two processions: one procession is of old people waling with bent backs, supported with bent canes; they are out of breath though their path is downhill.

The other is a procession of young men, running as if on winged feet, and jubilant as with musical strings in their throats, surmounting obstacles as if there were magnets drawing them up on the mountainside and magic enchating their hearts.

Which are you and in which procession do you move?

Ask yourself and meditate in the still of the night; find if you are a slave of yesterday or free for the morrow.

I tell you that the children of yesteryears are walking in the funeral of the era that they created for themselves. They are pulling a rotted rope that might break soon and cause them to drop into a forgotten abyss. I say that they are living in homes with weak foundations; as the storm blows -- and it is about to blow -- their homes will fall upon their heads and thus become their tombs. I say that all their thoughts, their sayings, their quarrels, their compositions, their books and all their work are nothing but chains dragging them because they are too weak to pull the load.

But the children of tomorrow are the ones called by life, and the follow it with steady steps and heads high, they are the dawn of new frontiers, no smoke will veil their eyes and no jingle of chains will drown out their voices. They are few in number, but the difference is as between a grain of wheat and a stack of hay. No one knows them but they know each other. They are like the summits, which can see or hear each other -- not like caves, which cannot hear or see. They are the seed dropped by the hand of God in the field, breaking through its pod and waving its sapling leaves before the face of the sun. It shall grow into a mighty tree, its root in the heart of the earth and its branches high in the sky. 

Your Thought And Mine

Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition and whose branches grow in the power of continuity. My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky. Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor the lightning can shake. My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it.

 My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.

You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of the simple by the subtle ones. My thought creates in me the desire to till the earth with my hoe, and harvest the crops with my sickle, and build my home with stones and mortar, and weave my raiment with woollen and linen threads. Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability. Mine commends self-reliance. Your thought advocates fame and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity. Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads. My thought speaks softly in my ears, “Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head.” Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices. Mine exhorts me to humble service.

You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is social science, a religious and political dictionary. Mine is simple axiom. Your thought speaks of the beautiful woman, the ugly, the virtuous, the prostitute, the intelligent, and the stupid. Mine sees in every woman a mother, a sister, or a daughter of every man. The subjects of your thought are thieves, criminals, and assassins. Mine declares that thieves are the creatures of monopoly, criminals are the offspring of tyrants, and assassins are akin to the slain. Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity. Your thought concerns the skilled, the artist, the intellectual, the philosopher, the priest. Mine speaks of the loving and the affectionate, the sincere, the honest, the forthright, the kindly, and the martyr. Your thought advocates Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In my thought there is only one universal religion, whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being. In your thought there are the rich, the poor, and the beggared. My thought holds that there are no riches but life; that we are all beggars, and no benefactor exists save life herself.

You have your thought and I have mine.

According to your thought, the greatness of nations lies in their politics, their parties, their conferences, their alliances and treaties. But mine proclaims that the importance of nations lies in work – work in the field, work in the vineyards, work with the loom, work in the tannery, work in the quarry, work in the timberyard, work in the office and in the press. Your thought holds that the glory of the nations is in their heroes. It sings the praises of Rameses, Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, and Napoleon. But mine claims that the real heroes are Confucius, Lao-Tse, Socrates, Plato, Abi Taleb, El Gazali, Jalal Ed-din-el Roumy, Copernicus, and Pasteur. Your thought sees power in armies, cannons, battleships, submarines, aeroplanes, and poison gas. But mine asserts that power lies in reason, resolution, and truth. No matter how long the tyrant endures, he will be the loser at the end. Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist, between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist. Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables. He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man.

You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is interested in ruins and museums, mummies and petrified objects. But mine hovers in the ever-renewed haze and clouds. Your thought is enthroned on skulls. Since you take pride in it, you glorify it too. My thought wanders in the obscure and distant valleys. Your thought trumpets while you dance. Mine prefers the anguish of death to your music and dancing. Your thought is the thought of gossip and false pleasure. Mine is the thought of him who is lost in his own country, of the alien in his own nation, of the solitary among his kinfolk and friends.

You have your thought and I have mine. 

I Believe In You (To The Americans Of Lebanese Origin)

I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny.

I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization.

I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America.

I believe that you can say to the founders of this great nation, "Here I am, a youth, a young tree whose roots were plucked from the hills of Lebanon, yet I am deeply rooted here, and I would be fruitful."

And I believe that you can say to Abraham Lincoln, the blessed, "Jesus of Nazareth touched your lips when you spoke, and guided your hand when you wrote; and I shall uphold all that you have said and all that you have written."

I believe that you can say to Emerson and Whitman and James, "In my veins runs the blood of the poets and wise men of old, and it is my desire to come to you and receive, but I shall not come with empty hands."

I believe that even as your fathers came to this land to produce riches, you were born here to produce riches by intelligence, by labor.

I believe that it is in you to be good citizens.

And what is it to be a good citizen?

It is to acknowledge the other person's rights before asserting your own, but always to be conscious of your own.

It is to be free in word and deed, but it is also to know that your freedom is subject to the other person's freedom.

It is to create the useful and the beautiful with your own hands, and to admire what others have created in love and with faith.

It is to produce by labor and only by labor, and to spend less than you have produced that your children may not be dependent upon the state for support when you are no more.

It is to stand before the towers of New York and Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in your heart, "I am the descendant of a people that builded Damascus and Byblos, and Tyre and Sidon and Antioch, and now I am here to build with you, and with a will."

You should be proud of being an American, but you should also be proud that your fathers and mothers came from a land upon which God laid His gracious hand and raised His messengers.

Young Americans of Syrian origin, I believe in you. 

My Countrymen

What do you seek, my countrymen?

Do you desire that I build for 
You gorgeous palaces, decorated 
With words of empty meaning, or 
Temples roofed with dreams? Or 
Do you command me to destroy what 
The liars and tyrants have built? 

Shall I uproot with my fingers 
What the hypocrites and the wicked 
Have implanted? Speak your insane 
Wish! 

What is it you would have me do, 
My countrymen? Shall I purr like 
The kitten to satisfy you, or roar 
Like the lion to please myself? I 
Have sung for you, but you did not 
Dance; I have wept before you, but 
You did not cry. Shall I sing and 
Weep at the same time? 

Your souls are suffering the pangs 
Of hunger, and yet the fruit of 
Knowledge is more plentiful than 
The stones of the valleys. 

Your hearts are withering from 
Thirst, and yet the springs of 
Life are streaming about your 
Homes -- why do you not drink? 

The sea has its ebb and flow, 
The moon has its fullness and 
Crescents, and the ages have 
Their winter and summer, and all 
Things vary like the shadow of 
An unborn god moving between 
Earth and sun, but truth cannot 
Be changed, nor will it pass away; 
Why, then, do you endeavour to 
Disfigure its countenance? 

I have called you in the silence 
Of the night to point out the 
Glory of the moon and the dignity 
Of the stars, but you startled 
From your slumber and clutched 
Your swords in fear, crying, 
"Where is the enemy? We must kill 
Him first!" At morningtide, when 
The enemy came, I called to you 
Again, but now you did not wake 
From your slumber, for you were 
Locked in fear, wrestling with 
The processions of spectres in 
Your dreams. 

And I said unto you, "Let us climb 
To the mountain top and view the 
Beauty of the world." And you 
Answered me, saying, "In the depths 
Of this valley our fathers lived, 
And in its shadows they died, and in 
Its caves they were buried. How can 
We depart this place for one which 
They failed to honour?" 

And I said unto you, "Let us go to 
The plain that gives its bounty to 
The sea." And you spoke timidly to 
Me, saying, "The uproar of the abyss 
Will frighten our spirits, and the 
Terror of the depths will deaden 
Our bodies." 

I have loved you, my countrymen, but 
My love for you is painful to me 
And useless to you; and today I 
Hate you, and hatred is a flood 
That sweeps away the dry branches 
And quavering houses. 

I have pitied your weakness, my 
Countrymen, but my pity has but 
Increased your feebleness, exalting 
And nourishing slothfulness which 
Is vain to life. And today I see 
Your infirmity which my soul loathes 
And fears. 

I have cried over your humiliation 
And submission, and my tears streamed 
Like crystalline, but could not sear 
Away your stagnant weakness; yet they 
Removed the veil from my eyes. 

My tears have never reached your 
Petrified hearts, but they cleansed 
The darkness from my inner self. 

Today I am mocking at your suffering, 
For laughter is a raging thunder that 
Precedes the tempest and never comes 
After it. 

What do you desire, my countrymen? 
Do you wish for me to show you 
The ghost of your countenance on 
The face of still water? Come, 
Now, and see how ugly you are! 

Look and meditate! Fear has 
Turned your hair grey as the 
Ashes, and dissipation has grown 
Over your eyes and made them into 
Obscured hollows, and cowardice 
Has touched your cheeks that now 
Appear as dismal pits in the 
Valley, and death has kissed 
Your lips and left them yellow 
As the autumn leaves. 

What is it that you seek, my 
Countrymen? What ask you from 
Life, who does not any longer 
Count you among her children? 

Your souls are freezing in the 
Clutches of the priests and 
Sorcerers, and your bodies 
Tremble between the paws of the 
Despots and the shedders of 
Blood, and your country quakes 
Under the marching feet of the 
Conquering enemy; what may you 
Expect even though you stand 
Proudly before the face of the 
Sun? Your swords are sheathed 
With rust, and your spears are 
Broken, and your shields are 
Laden with gaps, why, then, do 
You stand in the field of battle? 

Hypocrisy is your religion, and 
Falsehood is your life, and 
Nothingness is your ending; why, 
Then, are you living? Is not 
Death the sole comfort of the 
Miserable? 

Life is a resolution that 
Accompanies youth, and a diligence 
That follows maturity, and a 
Wisdom that pursues senility; but 
You, my countrymen, were born old 
And weak. And your skins withered 
And your heads shrank, whereupon 
You become as children, running 
Into the mire and casting stones 
Upon each other. 

Knowledge is a light, enriching 
The warmth of life, and all may 
Partake who seek it out; but you, 
My countrymen, seek out darkness 
And flee the light, awaiting the 
Coming of water from the rock, 
And your nation's misery is your 
Crime. I do not forgive you 
Your sins, for you know what you 
Are doing. 

Humanity is a brilliant river 
Singing its way and carrying with 
It the mountains' secrets into 
The heart of the sea; but you, 
My countrymen, are stagnant 
Marshes infested with insects 
And vipers. 

The spirit is a sacred blue 
Torch, burning and devouring 
The dry plants, and growing 
With the storm and illuminating 
The faces of the goddesses; but 
You, my countrymen, your souls 
Are like ashes which the winds 
Scatter upon the snow, and which 
The tempests disperse forever in 
The valleys. 

Fear not the phantom of death, 
My countrymen, for his greatness 
And mercy will refuse to approach 
Your smallness; and dread not the 
Dagger, for it will decline to be 
Lodged in your shallow hearts. 

I hate you, my countrymen, because 
You hate glory and greatness. I 
Despise you because you despise 
Yourselves. I am your enemy, for 
You refuse to realize that you are 
The enemies of the goddesses.

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