This is an excerpt from The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, discovered in the anthology of his work called The Voice of Kahlil Gibran, translated by A.R. Ferris.
The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word ‘Mother’, and the most beautiful call is the call of ‘My mother’. It is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is everything – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.
Everything in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heat; it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks. And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love…The word mother is hidden in our hearts, and it comes upon our lips in hours of sorrow and happiness as the perfume comes from the heart of the rose and mingles with clear and cloudy air.
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Book Summary
Here are the book summaries from Goodreads, for both The Broken Wings and The Voice of Kahlil Gibran:
Millions all over the world have responded to the message of Kahlil Gibrana as recorded in his masterpiece, “The Prophet”. In the style that gave Gibran the title of “Dante of the Twentieth Century”, “The Voice of the Master” speaks stirringly of the victory of faith over grief, and love over loneliness. “Of Marriage”, “Of the Divinity of Man”, “Of Reason and Knowledge”, “Of Love and Equality”, –these are some of the themes Gibran searches in this volume, offering fresh insight into many of life’s most perplexing riddles.
This selection and introduction copyright © Robin Waterfield 1995.
More details on Goodreads can be found here.
This is the exquisitely tender story of love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man. Portraying the happiness and infinite sorrow of his relationship with Selma, Gibran at the same time probes the spiritual meaning of human existence with profound compassion.
Copyright © 1912 by Kahlil Gibran.
Translated by A.R. Ferris.
More details on Goodreads can be found here.
