The Prophet

Pagehush Classics Famous stories, poems and fables that are old enough to be … Follow

Before sailing home, the prophet Almustafa answers the people of Orphalese on love, marriage, children, work, joy and sorrow, friendship and death. One of the best-loved books of the last century. By Kahlil Gibran (1923). A public-domain classic.

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How it begins Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld his ship coming with the mist. Keep reading →

About this story

Almustafa has lived in the city of Orphalese for twelve years and is about to board the ship that will take him home. The people he is leaving gather and ask him to speak before he goes. Each question, about love, marriage, children, work, joy and sorrow, friendship or death, is answered in a short prose poem.

Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese-born poet and painter living in New York, wrote it in English and published it in 1923. It is a book you can open anywhere: each section stands alone, which is why people read from it at weddings and funerals and keep a copy for years.

Themes: Love, work, loss, freedom, how to live
Good for: Slow reading, one section at a time; a quiet moment, or a gift for someone
Worth noticing: How each answer turns the question around instead of giving a rule.

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