Jun 01 2026
Kahlil Gibran – The Vast Man
The Vast Man
by Kahlil Gibran
But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.
It was the boundless in you;
The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews;
He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.
It is in the vast man that you are vast,
And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.
For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?
What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.
His might binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.
— from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran
/ Image by Joshua Earle /
I know the poem emails have been irregular in recent months. My work as a computer programmer has been especially busy this year, and I am still figuring out how to balance that with my poetry work. So, since I missed the last few Fridays, I thought I’d send a rare Monday poem to you. And, as I was somewhat randomly going through my library, I was reminded of this treasure by the great Kahlil Gibran.
It is in the vast man that you are vast
I can write a long commentary, line by line, about how this lovely poem maps beautifully to the deep experiences of stillness and settling into the true Self. But I feel inclined to let the poem sing to us instead — quietly, yet the melody comes through.
This is the way, the stillness that leads us to the vast man — or woman — the vast self. This is the immense being we all are, all-encompassing, all-embracing, in which the little self is made whole and more than whole in the grand unity that is the web of which we are a part. Through this one we know ourselves as we come to know ourselves in others and in all that surrounds us and all that lives and breathes and aspires and grows.
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.
His might binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.
Have a beautiful day!
Recommended Books: Kahlil Gibran
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| The Prophet | The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart | Broken Wings | Jesus the Son of Man | Kahlil Gibran: His Life & World |
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Kahlil Gibran
Lebanon/US (1883 – 1931) Timeline |
Kahlil Gibran, because of his name, is often assumed to have been a Muslim, but he was actually a Maronite Christian, originally from what is today Lebanon (then part of Syria and the Ottoman Empire).
His father, also named Kahlil, had drinking problems and gambling debts. This led the senior Gibran to leave his job as an assistant pharmacist, taking work instead as an enforcer for the local Ottoman administrator. He eventually ended up in jail.
This difficult situation left the family in poverty. As a result, Gibran did not receive a formal education as a young boy, but a local priest taught him to read Arabic and Syriac, as well as stories from the Bible, filling him with an early awareness of the mystical dimensions of Christianity.
When Gibran was eight, his mother moved the family, including his older half-brother and his two younger sisters, to Boston. Although shy, Gibran quickly learned English and, thanks to a scholarship, started to receive more of a formal education.
The boy became fascinated by Boston’s world of art and music, visiting galleries and performances. At age 13, his artistic gifts came to the attention of cultural circles in Boston, where he was further introduced to artistic trends.
Despite this early success, Gibran was sent back to Lebanon to complete his education, where he excelled in poetry.
He returned to the United States in 1902 in the midst of a family crisis. His mother had cancer, and his older brother and his fourteen-year-old sister had tuberculosis. His sister soon died. The brother, who had been supporting the family with a small hardware store, moved to Cuba to try to recover his health, leaving the young Gibran in the difficult position of having to take over the hardware business. A year later, his brother returned from Cuba, but died soon thereafter. The same year, his mother also died.
In the aftermath of so much death, Gibran sold the family business and threw all of his energy into art and writing and perfecting his English. He also reconnected with the Boston cultural benefactors he had known as a child.
He began to write columns for an Arabic-language newspaper and later collected these writings into his first published books.
In 1909, Gibran went to Paris for two years to broaden his artistic training, and he was particularly influenced by the artistic Symbolist movement, with its open embrace of mysticism.
Returning to America, he began to publish his first Arabic prose-poetry collections through a publisher in Egypt. He became active with Arab intellectual and artistic organizations, promoting the rich culture of the Arab-speaking world, while attempting to address its many problems under Western imperial rule.
In 1911, Gibran moved to New York. There he met and was influenced Abdul Baha, the leader of the Bahai Faith movement. He also met Carl Jung and was asked to paint the famous psychologist’s portrait, at which time Gibran became intrigued by Jungian philosophy.
Gibran began to write in his adopted language of English, writing The Madman, though it would be rejected by several publishing houses until a small publisher named Alfred Knopf would take a chance on the work.
When World War I broke out, he worked to free Syria from Ottoman rule, but was frustrated by the messy realities of war and power games of international politics.
In the years following publication of his best known work, The Prophet, Gibran would gain international notoriety.