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 fulfillment of your
needs and my love, then let it be a
promise till another day. 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,
And your heart-beats were in my heart, and
your breath was upon my face,
and I knew you all.
Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your
sleep your dreams were my dreams.
And oftentimes I was among you a lake among
the mountains.
I mirrored the summits in you and the bending
slopes, and even the passing
flocks of your thoughts and your desires.
And to my silence came the laughter of your
children in streams, and the
longing of your youths in rivers.
And when they reached my depth the streams and
the rivers ceased not yet to sing.
But sweeter still than laughter and greater
than longing came to me.
It was boundless in you;
The vast man in whom you are all but cells and
sinews;
He in whose chant all your singing is but a
soundless throbbing.
It is in the vast man that you are vast,
And in beholding him that I beheld you and
loved you.
For what distances can love reach that are not
in that vast sphere?
What visions, what expectations and what
presumptions can outsoar that flight?
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple
blossoms is the vast man in you.
His mind binds you to the earth, his fragrance
lifts you into space, and in his
durability you are deathless.
You have been told that, even like a chain,
you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth. You are also as
strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to
reckon the power of ocean by the
frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame
upon the seasons for their inconsistency.
Ay, you are like an ocean,
And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide
upon your shores, yet, even like
an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.
And like the seasons you are also,
And though in your winter you deny your
spring,
Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her
drowsiness and is not offended.
Think not I say these things in order that you
may say the one to the other,
"He praised us well. He saw but the good in us."
I only speak to you in words of that which you
yourselves know in thought.
And what is word knowledge but a shadow of
wordless knowledge?
Your thoughts and my words are waves from a
sealed memory that keeps records
of our yesterdays,
And of the ancient days when the earth knew
not us nor herself,
And of nights when earth was upwrought with
confusion,
Wise men have come to you to give you of their
wisdom. I came to take of your wisdom:
And behold I have found that which is greater
than wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering
more of itself,
While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail
the withering of your days.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that
fear the grave.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle and a
stepping-stone.
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.
Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden
promises made unto your faith you
have given but riches and power and glory.
Less than a promise have I given, and yet more
generous have you been to me.
You have given me deeper thirsting after life.
Surely there is no greater gift to a man than
that which turns all his aims into parching
lips and all life into a fountain.
And in this lies my honour and my reward, -
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink
I find the living water itself thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.
Some of you have deemed me proud and over-shy
to receive gifts.
To proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not
gifts.
And though I have eaten berries among the hill
when you would have had me sit at
your board,
And slept in the portico of the temple where
you would gladly have sheltered me,
Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my
days and my nights that made food sweet
to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions?
For this I bless you most:
You give much and know not that you give at
all.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in
a mirror turns to stone,
And a good deed that calls itself by tender
names becomes the parent to a curse.
And some of you have called me aloof, and
drunk with my own aloneness,
And you have said, "He holds council with the
trees of the forest, but not with men.
He sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon
our city."
True it is that I have climbed the hills and
walked in remote places.
How could I have seen you save from a great
height or a great distance?
How can one be indeed near unless he be far?
And others among you called unto me, not in
words, and they said,
Stranger, stranger, lover of unreachable
heights, why dwell you among the summits
where eagles build their nests?
Why seek you the unattainable?
What storms would you trap in your net,
And what vaporous birds do you hunt in the
sky?
Come and be one of us.
Descend and appease your hunger with our bread
and quench your thirst with our wine."
In the solitude of their souls they said these
things;
But were their solitude deeper they would have
known that I sought but the secret of
your joy and your pain,
And I hunted only your larger selves that walk
the sky.
But the hunter was also the hunted: For many
of my arrows left my bow only to seek
my own breast.
And the flier was also the creeper;
For when my wings were spread in the sun their
shadow upon the earth was a turtle.
And I the believer was also the doubter;
For often have I put my finger in my own wound
that I might have the greater belief in
you and the greater knowledge of you.
And it is with this belief and this knowledge
that I say,
You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor
confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the mountain
and roves with the wind.
It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for
warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety,
But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the
earth and moves in the ether.
If this be vague words, then seek not to clear
them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all
things, but not their end,
And I fain would have you remember me as a
beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the
mist and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
This would I have you remember in remembering
me:
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in
you is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and
hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you
remember having dreamt that building your city
and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you
would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the
dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is
well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted
by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be
pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known
blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden
purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you would
bless light.
After saying these things he looked about him,
and he saw the pilot of his ship standing
by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and
now at the distance.
And he said:
Patient, over-patient, is the captain of my
ship.
The wind blows, and restless are the sails;
Even the rudder begs direction; Yet quietly my
captain awaits my silence.
And these my mariners, who have heard the
choir of the greater sea, they too have
heard me patiently.
Now they shall wait no longer.
I am ready.
The stream has reached the sea, and once more
the great mother holds her son against
her breast.
Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily
upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we
come together and together stretch our
hands unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather
dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the
wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent
with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of
your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is
over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking
has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet
once more, we shall speak again together
and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream,
we shall build another tower in the sky.
So saying he made a signal to the seamen, and
straightaway they weighed anchor
and cast the ship loose from its moorings, and
they moved eastward.
And a cry came from the people as from a
single heart, and it rose the dusk and
was carried out over the sea like a great
trumpeting.
Only Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship
until it had vanished into the mist.
And when all the people were dispersed she
still stood alone upon the sea-wall,
remembering in her heart his saying,
A little while, a moment of rest upon the
wind, and another woman shall bear me."
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