The Farewell

And now it was evening.

And Almitra the seeress said, Blessed bethis day and this place and your spiritthat has spoken.

And he answered, Was it I who spoke? WasI not also a listener?

Then he descended the steps of theTemple and all the people followed him.And he reached his ship and stood uponthe deck.

And facing the people again, he raisedhis voice and said:

People of Orphalese, the wind bids meleave you.

Less hasty am I than the wind, yet Imust go.

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelierway, begin no day where we have endedanother day; and no sunrise finds uswhere sunset left us.

Even while the earth sleeps we travel.

We are the seeds of the tenaciousplant, and it is in our ripeness and ourfullness of heart that we are given tothe wind and are scattered.

Brief were my days among you, andbriefer still the words I have spoken.

But should my voice fade in your ears,and my love vanish in your memory, thenI will come again,

And with a richer heart and lips moreyielding to the spirit will I speak.

Yea, I shall return with the tide,

And though death may hide me, and thegreater silence enfold me, yet againwill I seek your understanding.

And not in vain will I seek.

If aught I have said is truth, thattruth shall reveal itself in a clearervoice, and in words more kin to yourthoughts.

I go with the wind, people ofOrphalese, but not down into emptiness;

And if this day is not a fulfilmentof your needs and my love, then let itbe a promise till another day.

Man’s needs change, but not his love,nor his desire that his love shouldsatisfy his needs.

Know therefore, that from the greatersilence I shall return.

The mist that drifts away at dawn,leaving but dew in the fields, shallrise and gather into a cloud and thenfall down in rain.

And not unlike the mist have I been.

In the stillness of the night I havewalked in your streets, and my spirithas entered your houses,

And your heart-beats were in my heart,and your breath was upon my face, and Iknew you all.

Ay, I knew your joy and your pain,and in your sleep your dreams were mydreams.

And oftentimes I was among you a lakeamong the mountains.

I mirrored the summits in you and thebending slopes, and even thepassing flocks of your thoughts and yourdesires.

And to my silence came the laughterof your children in streams, and thelonging of your youths in rivers.

And when they reached my depth thestreams and the rivers ceased not yet tosing.

But sweeter still than laughter andgreater than longing came to me.

It was the boundless in you;

The vast man in whom you are all butcells and sinews;

He in whose chant all your singing isbut a soundless throbbing.

It is in the vast man that you are vast,

And in beholding him that I beheld youand loved you.

For what distances can love reach thatare not in that vast sphere?

What visions, what expectations and whatpresumptions can outsoar that flight?

Like a giant oak tree covered with appleblossoms is the vast man in you.

His might binds you to the earth, hisfragrance lifts you into space, and inhis durability you are deathless.

You have been told that, even like achain, you are as weak as your weakestlink.

This is but half the truth. You are alsoas strong as your strongest link.

To measure you by your smallest deedis to reckon the power of ocean by thefrailty of its foam.

To judge you by your failures is tocast blame upon the seasons for theirinconstancy.

Ay, you are like an ocean,

And though heavy-grounded ships awaitthe tide upon your shores, yet, evenlike an ocean, you cannot hasten yourtides.

And like the seasons you are also,

And though in your winter you deny yourspring,

Yet spring, reposing within you, smilesin her drowsiness and is not offended.

Think not I say these things inorder that you may say the one to theother, “He praised us well. He saw butthe good in us.”

I only speak to you in words of thatwhich you yourselves know in thought.

And what is word knowledge but a shadowof wordless knowledge?

Your thoughts and my words are wavesfrom a sealed memory that keeps recordsof our yesterdays,

And of the ancient days when the earthknew not us nor herself,

And of nights when earth was up-wroughtwith confusion.

Wise men have come to you to give youof their wisdom. I came to take of yourwisdom:

And behold I have found that which isgreater than wisdom.

It is a flame spirit in you evergathering more of itself,

While you, heedless of its expansion,bewail the withering of your days.

It is life in quest of life inbodies that fear the grave.

There are no graves here.

These mountains and plains are a cradleand a stepping-stone.

Whenever you pass by the field whereyou have laid your ancestors look wellthereupon, and you shall see yourselvesand your children dancing hand in hand.

Verily you often make merry withoutknowing.

Others have come to you to whom forgolden promises made unto your faithyou have given but riches and power andglory.

Less than a promise have I given, andyet more generous have you been to me.

You have given me my deeper thirstingafter life.

Surely there is no greater gift to a manthan that which turns all his aimsinto parching lips and all life into afountain.

And in this lies my honour and my reward,--

That whenever I come to the fountainto drink I find the living water itselfthirsty;

And it drinks me while I drink it.

Some of you have deemed me proud andover-shy to receive gifts.

Too proud indeed am I to receive wages,but not gifts.

And though I have eaten berries amongthe hills when you would have had me sitat your board,

And slept in the portico of the templewhen you would gladly have sheltered me,

Yet was it not your loving mindfulnessof my days and my nights that made foodsweet to my mouth and girdled my sleepwith visions?

For this I bless you most:

You give much and know not that you giveat all.

Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns tostone,

And a good deed that calls itself bytender names becomes the parent to acurse.

And some of you have called me aloof,and drunk with my own aloneness,

And you have said, “He holds councilwith the trees of the forest, but notwith men.

He sits alone on hill-tops and looksdown upon our city.”

True it is that I have climbed the hillsand walked in remote places.

How could I have seen you save from agreat height or a great distance?

How can one be indeed near unless he befar?

And others among you called unto me, notin words, and they said,

“Stranger, stranger, lover ofunreachable heights, why dwell you amongthe summits where eagles buildtheir nests?

Why seek you the unattainable?

What storms would you trap in your net,

And what vaporous birds do you hunt inthe sky?

Come and be one of us.

Descend and appease your hunger with ourbread and quench your thirst with ourwine.”

In the solitude of their souls they saidthese things;

But were their solitude deeper theywould have known that I sought but thesecret of your joy and your pain,

And I hunted only your larger selvesthat walk the sky.

But the hunter was also the hunted;

For many of my arrows left my bow onlyto seek my own breast.

And the flier was also the creeper;

For when my wings were spread in thesun their shadow upon the earth was aturtle.

And I the believer was also the doubter;

For often have I put my fingerin my own wound that I might have thegreater belief in you and the greaterknowledge of you.

And it is with this belief and thisknowledge that I say,

You are not enclosed within your bodies,nor confined to houses or fields.

That which is you dwells above themountain and roves with the wind.

It is not a thing that crawls intothe sun for warmth or digs holes intodarkness for safety,

But a thing free, a spirit that envelopsthe earth and moves in the ether.

If these be vague words, then seek notto clear them.

Vague and nebulous is the beginning ofall things, but not their end,

And I fain would have you remember me asa beginning.

Life, and all that lives, is conceivedin the mist and not in the crystal.

And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?

This would I have you remember inremembering me:

That which seems most feeble andbewildered in you is the strongest andmost determined.

Is it not your breath that has erectedand hardened the structure of yourbones?

And is it not a dream which none of youremember having dreamt, that buildedyour city and fashioned all there is init?

Could you but see the tides of thatbreath you would cease to see all else,

And if you could hear the whispering ofthe dream you would hear no other sound.

But you do not see, nor do you hear, andit is well.

The veil that clouds your eyes shall belifted by the hands that wove it,

And the clay that fills your ears shallbe pierced by those fingers that kneadedit.

And you shall see.

And you shall hear.

Yet you shall not deplore having knownblindness, nor regret having been deaf.

For in that day you shall know thehidden purposes in all things,

And you shall bless darkness as youwould bless light.

After saying these things he lookedabout him, and he saw the pilot of hisship standing by the helm and gazingnow at the full sails and now at thedistance.

And he said:

Patient, over patient, is the captain ofmy ship.

The wind blows, and restless are thesails;

Even the rudder begs direction;

Yet quietly my captain awaits mysilence.

And these my mariners, who have heardthe choir of the greater sea, they toohave heard me patiently.

Now they shall wait no longer.

I am ready.

The stream has reached the sea, andonce more the great mother holds her sonagainst her breast.

Fare you well, people of Orphalese.

This day has ended.

It is closing upon us even as thewater-lily upon its own tomorrow.

What was given us here we shall keep,

And if it suffices not, then again mustwe come together and together stretchour hands unto the giver.

Forget not that I shall come back toyou.

A little while, and my longing shallgather dust and foam for another body.

A little while, a moment of rest uponthe wind, and another woman shall bearme.

Farewell to you and the youth I havespent with you.

It was but yesterday we met in adream.

You have sung to me in myaloneness, and I of your longings havebuilt a tower in the sky.

But now our sleep has fled and our dreamis over, and it is no longer dawn.

The noontide is upon us and our halfwaking has turned to fuller day, and wemust part.

If in the twilight of memory we shouldmeet once more, we shall speak againtogether and you shall sing to me adeeper song.

And if our hands should meet in anotherdream we shall build another tower inthe sky.

So saying he made a signal to theseamen, and straightway they weighedanchor and cast the ship loose from itsmoorings, and they moved eastward.

And a cry came from the people as from asingle heart, and it rose into the duskand was carried out over the sea like agreat trumpeting.

Only Almitra was silent, gazing afterthe ship until it had vanished intothe mist.

And when all the people were dispersedshe still stood alone upon the sea-wall,remembering in her heart his saying,

“A little while, a moment of rest uponthe wind, and another woman shall bearme.”