else it could not have
so universal and so potent,
but the majesty and
beauty of the language
with which he clothed it
were all his own”
― Claude Bragdon

This ebook is a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and prose (First published 1918).

☛ This is a new edition for kindle with active table of contents, drop caps and original drawings by the author.
Grab the free preview or "look inside" and give it a try.


Table of contents
How I Became A Madman
God
My Friend
The Scarecrow
The Sleep Walkers
The Wise Dog
The Two Hermits
On Giving And Taking
The Seven Selves
War
The Fox
The Wise King
Ambition
The New Pleasure
The Other Language
The Pomegranate
The Two Cages
The Three Ants
The Grave-Digger
On The Strips Of The Temple
The Blessed City
The Good God and the Evil God
"Defeat"
Night And The Madman
Faces
The Greater Sea
Crucified
The Astronomer
The Great Longing
Said a Blade of Grass
The Eye
The Two Learned Men
When My Sorrow Was Born
And When My Joy Was Born
"The Perfect World"

☛ Incipit
You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

☛ Biography
1883-KAHLIL GIBRAN-1931
Poet, philosopher, and artist, was born in Lebanon, a land that has produced many prophets. The millions of Arabic-speaking peoples familiar with his writings in that language consider him the genius of his age. But he was a man whose fame and influence spread far beyond the Near East. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited in the great capitals of the world and compared by Auguste Rodin to the work of William Blake. In the United States, which he made his home during the last twenty years of his life, he began to write in English. The Prophet and his other books of poetry, illustrated with his mystical drawings, are known and loved by innumerable Americans who find in them an expression of the, deepest impulses of man's heart and mind.