GIBRAN Khalil Poem ON FREEDOM English TEXT Book THE PROPHET
Gibran Khalil Gibran
On Freedom
The Prophet e-Book
(1923)
Full Text online
poetry in prose
Original English Full Text
Arabic literature
” Freedom “ is a prose poem by Gibran Khalil Gibran contained in his famous book “The Prophet”.
In the chapter ” Freedom “, Khalil Gibran asserts that man is truly free only when he stops considering freedom as fulfillment.
People want to attain freedom and escape slavery, but they fail to recognize that both are intertwined within themselves.
Below you can read the index of prose poems contained in the book The Prophet by Gibran Khalil Gibran with the link to where you can read them.
Index
The Prophet book
by Khalil Gibran
(with the link on yeyebook to where you can read them)
THE COMING OF THE SHIP
ON HOUSES
ON CLOTHES
ON BUYING AND SELLING
ON LAWS
ON FREEDOM
ON PAIN
ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE
ON TEACHING
ON TALKING
ON TIME
ON PRAYER
ON PLEASURE
ON BEAUTY
ON RELIGION
ON DEATH
THE FAREWELL
Below you can read the full english text of the chapter ” On Freedom “ from “The Prophet” book by Khalil Gibran.
In the top or bottom menu you can read the prose poem text ” On Freedom ” by Gibran translated into other languages: Italian, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, etc.
Khalil Gibran All the poems > here
Khalil Gibran
The Prophet eBook
” On Freedom “
Original English text
Amd an orator said,
Speak to us of Freedom.
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside
I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Aye, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel
I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom
as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me;
for you can only be free when
even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you,
and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when
your days are not without a care nor
your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life
and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights
unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding
have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains,
though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you
would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish,
that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books
nor by washing the foreheads of your judges,
though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone,
see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud,
but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off,
that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel,
the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being
in constant half embrace,
the desired and the dreaded,
the repugnant and the cherished,
the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights
and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more,
the light that lingers
becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters
becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
…
..
.
Khalil Gibran – On Freedom
from Book: The Prophet (1923)
Arabic literature – poetry in prose
Original English full text
Khalil Gibran All the poems > here
