{"id":151204,"date":"2020-01-13T12:01:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T12:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=151204"},"modified":"2020-01-05T09:11:34","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T09:11:34","slug":"pity-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/01\/pity-the-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Pity the Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
\nPity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
\nand eats a bread it does not harvest.<\/p>\n

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
\nand that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.<\/p>\n

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
\nyet submits in its awakening.<\/p>\n

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
\nsave when it walks in a funeral,
\nboasts not except among its ruins,
\nand will rebel not save when its neck is laid
\nbetween the sword and the block.<\/p>\n

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
\nwhose philosopher is a juggler,
\nand whose art is the art of patching and mimicking<\/p>\n

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
\nand farewells him with hooting,
\nonly to welcome another with trumpeting again.<\/p>\n

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
\nand whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.<\/p>\n

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
\neach fragment deeming itself a nation.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

From<\/em> The Garden of the Prophet<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Kahlil Gibran (Jan 6 1883\u2013Apr 10 1931) was a Lebanese artist, poet, and writer. As a young man he immigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied art and began his literary career, writing in both English and Arabic. His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern Arabic literature, especially prose poetry, breaking away from the classical school. In Lebanon, he is still celebrated as a literary hero. He is chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book The Prophet<\/a>, an early example of inspirational fiction including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again especially in the 1960s counterculture<\/a>. Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare<\/a> and Laozi<\/a>. (Wikipedia)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
\nPity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
\nand eats a bread it does not harvest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":151206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[868],"class_list":["post-151204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}