“Houses” by Khalil Gibran

A mason came forth and said, “Speak to us of Houses.”
And he answered and said:
build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you
build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the
wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night;
and it is not dreamless.
Does not your home dream? And dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower
scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green path your alleys,
that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with
the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses?
And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits
of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood
and stone to the holy mountains?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?

Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by our bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistle down
like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, an then
walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor, but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid
that guards an eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend you heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to
breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold
your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky,
whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs
and the stillness of night.