Work is Love Made Visible

And if you cannot work
with love
but only with distaste,
it is better that you should leave
your work and sit at
the gate of the temple
and take alms
of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread
with indifference, you bake
a bitter bread,
that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing
of the grapes,
your grudge distills
a poison
in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels,
and love not the singing, 
you muffle man’s ears
to the voices of the day
and the voices
of the night.

Retrieved 6/6/2010 from http://www.quotesandpoem.com/poems/poeticworks/Gibran/The_Prophet/5