sent in by Radhika Gowaikar 

'Children'

 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
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