Mirrors of the Soul Read Online Free PDF Page A

estimation.
    Let me tell you who are the children of my Lebanon.
    They are the farmers who would turn fallow field into garden and grove.
    They are the shepherds who lead their flocks through the valleys to be fattened for your table meat and your woolens.
    They are the vine-pressers who press the grape to wine and boil it to syrup.
    They are the parents who tend the nurseries, the mothers who spin silken yarn.
    They are the husbands who harvest the wheat and the wives who gather the sheaves.
    They are the builders, the potters, the weavers and the bell-casters.
    They are the poets who pour their souls in new cups.
    They are those who migrate with nothing but courage in their hearts and strength in their arms but who return with wealth in their hands and a wreath of glory upon their heads.
    They are the victorious wherever they go and loved and respected wherever they settle.
    They are the ones born in huts but who died in palaces of learning.
    These are the children of Lebanon; they are the lamps that cannot be snuffed by the wind and the salt which remains unspoiled through the ages.
    They are the ones who are steadily moving toward perfection, beauty and truth.
    What will remain of your Lebanon after a century? Tell me! Except bragging, lying and stupidity? Do you expect the ages to keep in its memory the traces of deceit and cheating and hypocrisy? Do you think the atmosphere will preserve in its pockets the shadows of death and the stench of graves?
    Do you believe life will accept a patched garment for a dress? Verily, I say to you that an olive plant in the hills of Lebanon will outlast all of your deeds and your works; that the wooden plow pulled by the oxen in the crannies of Lebanon are nobler than your dreams and aspirations.
    I say to you, while the conscience of time listened to me, that the songs of a maiden collecting herbs in the valleys of Lebanon will outlast all the uttering of the most exalted prattler among you. I say to you that you are achieving nothing. If you knew that you are accomplishing nothing, I would feel sorry for you, but you know it not.
    You have Your Lebanon and I have My Lebanon.
    [As Gibran bitterly assailed the politicians in Lebanon he tenderly expressed his hopes and belief in the young people of Lebanese and Syrian origin in America. The following message is often found, framed and displayed on the walls in the homes of Gibran’s countrymen:] *
    I Believe in You
    by Gibran
    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