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Slavery by Gibran

The Slave (1920) - Harvard Art Museum

Seven thousand years have passed since first I was born, yet I have seen only submissive slaves and shackled prisoners.

I have traveled the east and the west of the world and wandered in the shadows of life and in its bright days. I have beheld the caravans of nations and peoples journeying from its caves to its castles, but until now I have seen only serfs bent beneath their burdens, arms bound by chains, knees bent before idols.

I have followed man's path from Babylon to Paris, from Nineveh to New York? Everywhere beside his footprints in the sand I saw the marks of his dragging chains? Everywhere the valleys and hills echoed with the grief of generations and centuries.

I entered the palaces, the squares, the temples. I stood before thrones, altars, and pulpits? There I saw the laborer a slave to the merchant, the merchant a slave to the soldier, the soldier a slave to the general, the general a slave to the king, the king a slave to the priest, the priest a slave to the idol, the idol shaped from dust by devils and raised above a hill of dead men's skulls.

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