A Bite Size Hors d'oeuvre from The Garden of the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1933)
Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a noon unto his own day, returned to the isle of his birth in the month of Tichreen, which is the month of remembrance.
And as his ship approached the harbour, he stood upon its prow, and his mariners were about him.
And there was a homecoming in his heart.
And he spoke, and the sea was in his voice, and he said: "Behold, the isle of our birth. Even here the earth heaved us, a song and a riddle; a song unto the sky, a riddle unto the earth; and what is there between earth and sky that shall carry the song and solve the riddle save our own passion?
"The sea yields us once more to these shores. We are but another wave of her waves. She sends us forth to sound her speech, but how shall we do so unless we break the symmetry of our heart on rock and sand?
"For this is the law of mariners and the sea: If you would freedom, you must needs turn to mist.
The formless is for ever seeking form, even as the countless nebulae would become suns and moons; and we who have sought much and return now to this isle, rigid moulds, we must become mist once more and learn of the beginning.
And what is there that shall live and rise unto the heights except it be broken unto passion and freedom?
"For ever shall we be in quest of the shores, that we may sing and be heard. But what of the wave that breaks where no ear shall hear? It is the unheard in us that nurses our deeper sorrow. Yet it is also the unheard which carves our soul to form and fashion our destiny."
(I invite you to read and digest in bite size quantities ...so you can munch on the muchness of the Lebanese poet's words... there's more where that came from. Stay true)