Work by Kahlil Gibran

And what is to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection,even as if your beloved to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often I have heard you say,as if speaking in sleep,

"He who works in marble,and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone,is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.

"And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man,is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet".

But I say,not in sleep,but in the overwakefulness of noontide,that the winds speaks not more than the least of all the blades of grass;

And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

WORK is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference,you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels,and love not the singing,

you muffle man's ears to the voices of the night!