| The Farewell |
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| And now it was evening. |
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| And Almitra the seeress said, "Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken." |
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| And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener? |
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| Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck. |
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| And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said: |
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| People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. |
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| Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. |
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| 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. |
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| Even while the earth sleeps we travel. |
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| 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. |
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| Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken. |
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| But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again, |
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| And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak. |
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| Yea, I shall return with the tide, |
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| And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding. |
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| And not in vain will I seek. |
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| If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts. |
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| I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness; |
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| And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. |
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| Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return. |
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| 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. |
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| And not unlike the mist have I been. |
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| In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses, |
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| And your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all. |
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| Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams. |
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| And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains. |
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| I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires. |
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| And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers. |
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| And when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing. |
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| But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me. |
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| It was boundless in you; |
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| The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews; |
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| He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing. |
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| It is in the vast man that you are vast, |
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| And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you. |
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| For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere? |
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| What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight? |
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| Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you. |
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| His mind binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless. |
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| You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. |
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| This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link. |
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| To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam. |
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| To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency. |
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| Ay, you are like an ocean, |
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| And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides. |
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| And like the seasons you are also, |
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| And though in your winter you deny your spring, |
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| Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended. |
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| 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." |
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| I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought. |
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| And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge? |
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| Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays, |
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| And of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself, |
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| And of nights when earth was upwrought with confusion, |
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| Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom. I came to take of your wisdom: |
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| And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom. |
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| It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself, |
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| While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days. |
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| It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave. |
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| There are no graves here. |
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| These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone. |
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| 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. |
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| Verily you often make merry without knowing. |
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| Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory. |
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| Less than a promise have I given, and yet more generous have you been to me. |
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| You have given me deeper thirsting after life. |
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| 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. |
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| And in this lies my honour and my reward, - |
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| That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty; |
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| And it drinks me while I drink it. |
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| Some of you have deemed me proud and over-shy to receive gifts. |
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| To proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts. |
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| And though I have eaten berries among the hill when you would have had me sit at your board, |
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| And slept in the portico of the temple where you would gladly have sheltered me, |
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| 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? |
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| For this I bless you most: |
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| You give much and know not that you give at all. |
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| Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, |
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| And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse. |
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| And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness, |
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| And you have said, "He holds council with the trees of the forest, but not with men. |
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| He sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon our city." |
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| True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places. |
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| How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance? |
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| How can one be indeed near unless he be far? |
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| And others among you called unto me, not in words, and they said, |
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| Stranger, stranger, lover of unreachable heights, why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests? |
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| Why seek you the unattainable? |
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| What storms would you trap in your net, |
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| And what vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky? |
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| Come and be one of us. |
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| Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench your thirst with our wine." |
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| In the solitude of their souls they said these things; |
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| But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret of your joy and your pain, |
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| And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky. |
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| But the hunter was also the hunted: |
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| For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast. |
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| And the flier was also the creeper; |
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| For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow upon the earth was a turtle. |
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| And I the believer was also the doubter; |
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| 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. |
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| And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say, |
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| You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. |
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| That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind. |
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| It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety, |
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| But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether. |
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| If this be vague words, then seek not to clear them. |
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| Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end, |
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| And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning. |
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| Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal. |
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| And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay? |
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| This would I have you remember in remembering me: |
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| That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. |
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| Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones? |
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| And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that building your city and fashioned all there is in it? |
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| Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else, |
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| And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound. |
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| But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well. |
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| The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it, |
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| And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it. |
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| And you shall see |
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| And you shall hear. |
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| Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. |
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| For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things, |
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| And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light. | |