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SAND AND FOAM

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The Books ofKAHLIL GIBRAN

"His power came from some great reservoir of spiritual life else it could not have been so universal and so potent, but the majesty and beauty of the language with which he clothed it were all his own."—Claude Bragdon

The Madman • 1918 Twenty Drawings • 1919 The Forerunner • 1920 The Prophet • 1923 Sand and Foam • 1926 Jesus the Son of Man • 1928 The Earth Gods • 1931 The Wanderer • 1932 The Garden of the Prophet • 1933 Prose Poems • 1934 Nymphs of the Valley • 1948 Spirits Rebellious • 1948 A Tear and a Smile • 1950 ∵ This Man from Lebanon— A Study of Kahlil Gibran by Barbara Young

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

SAND AND FOAM

A Book of Aphorisms

BYKAHLIL GIBRAN

NEW YORK · ALFRED A. KNOPF · MCMLVI

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY KAHLIL GIBRAN

Renewal copyright 1954 by Administrators C. T. A. of Kahlil Gibran Estate and Mary G. Gibran

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1926REPRINTED FIFTEEN TIMESSEVENTEENTH PRINTING, JUNE 1956

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS VOLUME ARE REPRODUCED FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR

SAND AND FOAM

I am forever walking upon these shores, Betwixt the sand and the foam. The high tide will erase my foot-prints, And the wind will blow away the foam. But the sea and the shore will remain Forever.

Once I filled my hand with mist. Then I opened it and lo, the mist was a worm. And I closed and opened my hand again, and behold there was a bird. And again I closed and opened my hand, and in its hollow stood a man with a sad face, turned upward. And again I closed my hand, and when I opened it there was naught but mist. But I heard a song of exceeding sweetness.

It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life. Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.

They say to me in their awakening, “You and the world you live in are but a grain of sand upon the infinite shore of an infinite sea.” And in my dream I say to them, “I am the infinite sea, and all worlds are but grains of sand upon my shore.”

Only once have I been made mute. It was when a man asked me, “Who are you?”

The first thought of God was an angel. The first word of God was a man.

We were fluttering, wandering, longing creatures a thousand thousand years before the sea and the wind in the forest gave us words. Now how can we express the ancient of days in us with only the sounds of our yesterdays?

The Sphinx spoke only once, and the Sphinx said, “A grain of sand is a desert, and a desert is a grain of sand; and now let us all be silent again.” I heard the Sphinx, but I did not understand.

Once I saw the face of a woman, and I beheld all her children not yet born. And a woman looked upon my face and she knew all my forefathers, dead before she was born.

Now would I fulfill myself. But how shall I unless I become a planet with intelligent lives dwelling upon it? Is not this every man’s goal?

A pearl is a temple built by pain around a grain of sand. What longing built our bodies and around what grains?

When God threw me, a pebble, into this wondrous lake I disturbed its surface with countless circles. But when I reached the depths I became very still.

Give me silence and I will outdare the night.