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 look seaward; and he beheld his ship coming with the mist.Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul. So begins The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran’s collection of twenty-eight prose poems on the themes of love, marriage, joy and sorrow, reason and passion, freedom, beauty, death—the essence of what we define as the human condition. Profound in its spirituality and elegant in its telling, Gibran’s masterwork has sold millions of copies since it was first published in 1923 and is admired around the world for its wisdom and philosophical insights. This edition features twelve illustrations drawn by the author to accompany his inspirational text.