[1194] Children

Guest poem sent in by Radhika Gowaikar <gowaikar@>

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of
Children."

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that
is stable.

 	-- Kahlil Gibran

Throughout 'The Prophet', Kahlil Gibran manages to bring together great
insight into how life works (or should, at any rate) and truly beautiful
language. And he makes the two seem mutually indispensible.  Which is why he
appeals to me intellectually as well as aesthetically. He is a master of
analogies and his texts have many that are apt and natural - that of the
archer in this poem is close to perfection.

From a more simplistic viewpoint, he places the "Leave me alone/Let go of
me" phenomenon that most 'children' experience at some point in a much
wider context. I say this because in recent months the topic of how one
should "bring one's parents up" <g> has come up repeatedly with some of my
friends. Well, here is how. (The minor problem that remains is conveying
it to the parents... <g>)

radhika.

Google spews out vast amounts of pages on Gibran. To name two:

http://leb.net/gibran has a detailed biography of Gibran as well as a lot
of his writings in full. (Including The Prophet.) They spell the first
name Khalil.

http://impact.civil.columbia.edu/~fawaz/g-gallery.html has many of
Gibran's illustrations that appear in The Prophet.

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1194.html
To subscribe, send a blank mail to <minstrels-subscribe@>.

From: John Burstow <johnburstow@>

Hi Martin,

I love the Wondering Minstrels and depend on it, but I only write you when
something I read there makes me see red--Billy Collins' stuff, for example,
or now today's wretched excuse for wisdom by Kahil Gibran.

To clear the taste buds, here is some Yeats, except maybe not his exact
words, for I have lost the source (I thought it was in the version of "The
Phases of the Moon" that appears Per Amica Silentia Lunae, which I have not
looked at in 35 years). Something like:

The rhetorician would deceive another,
The sentimentalist himself,
While art is but a vision of reality.


And now my "realistic" rewriting of Gibran:


Your children are not your children.

     They belong to your religion or the state

They come through you but not from you,

     And don't forget they belong to the state.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts;

    Our schools and media will give them their thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

     Which we will collect from our battlefields tomorrow.


Best,

John

From: Deepak.Srinivasan@  Thu Mar 13 10:32:43 2003

In this particular instance of Gibran's verse the following lines
say it for me
"And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams."
It is in children that we see the future. Let us "love" and "house"
them, but
let their thoughts and souls be free and unfettered.

peace
/Deepak

From: "POP_Logon_Name" <Email_Name@>

I saved this poem in my e-mail - as I do certain poems that I enjoy
reading, over again.  Gibran's "Children" echo my thoughts on how I
raised my own children, now 24 and 27years old.  I am as proud of
raising them as anything I have ever done.  Maybe one day I'll be
enlightened enough to understand John Burstow's comment, which I just
now came across,  but at the moment I think he is just a pessimistic
snob.  Linda   lindau @entermail.net 

From: Debbie Petersen <debbie@>

Hi John Burstow

I am curious...why so cynical...?? Don't you think there is enough of
that to go around as is...of course we need to be aware of the varying
influences on one's beliefs and attitudes...but i still prefer to
believe that if people/children choose to do so they can be free
thinkers...and their thoughts can be 'their own'...

And as far as 'wisdom' and 'reality' goes...these are personalised
perceptions...relative to who you are, your life experience, and what
you choose to adopt as your fundamental beliefs...

I for one am quite appreciative of Gibran's work...as a teenager reading
the piece 'Children' encouraged me to strive toward developing an open
mind...to formulate my own opinions on issues of interest to me and not
to merely adopt the dominant paradigms...to not succumb to the
indoctrination of the racist and apartheid society in which i was
raised...

regards,
DEBBiE

From: harvie.scott@  Tue Nov 15 21:54:37 2005

I remember having this poem hanging on the back of the toilet door.  I
have read it over and over.  Each year as I read it I would understand a
little more and appreciate the analogies.  It helps me today with four
children of my own.  The poem is truth and art all wrapped into one.  I
find it amazing that this poem has stuck with me still.  The fact that I
looked it up on the net so many years later still astounds me.