I BELIEVE IN YOU
The following poem was written by Gibran
Khalil Gibran for the first edition of Syrian World Magazine published
in Brooklyn, NY in 1926.
Young Americans of Syrian origin,
I believe in you
I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny.
I believe that you are contributors to this new
civilization.
I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers
an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which
you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon
the lap of America.
I believe you can say to the founders of this
great nation, "Here I am, a youth, a young tree whose
roots were plucked from the hills of Lebanon,
yet I am deeply rooted here, and I would be fruitful.
And I believe that you can say to Abraham Lincoln,
the blessed, Jesus of Nazareth touched your lips
when you spoke, and guided your hand when you
wrote; and I shall uphold all that you have said
and all that you have written"
I believe that you can say to Emerson and Whitman
and James, "In my veins runs the blood of the
poets and wise men of old, and it is my desire
to come to you and receive, but I shall not come with
empty hands.
I believe that even as your fathers came to this
land to produce riches, you were born here to
produce riches by intelligence, by labor.
And I believe that it is in you to be good citizens.
And what is it to be a good citizen?
It is to acknowledge the other person's rights
before asserting your own, but always to be conscious
of your own.
It is to be free in thought and deed, but it
is to know that your freedom is subject to the other
person's freedom.
It is to create the useful and the beautiful
with your own hands, and to admire what others have
created in love and with faith.
It is to produce wealth by labor and only by
labor, and to spend less than you have produced that
your children may not be dependent on the state
for support when you are no more.
It is to stand before the towers of New York,
Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in
your heart, "I am the descendant of a people
that builded Damascus, and Biblus, and Tyre and
Sidon, and Antioch, and now I am here to
build with you, and with a will.
It is to be proud of being an American, but it
is also to be proud that your fathers and mothers came
from a land upon which God hid his gracious hand
and raised His messengers.
Young Americans of Syrian origin, I believe in
you.
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