| On Pleasure | |
| 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. |