Your children are not your children.<br />They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. <br />They come through you but not from you.<br />And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.<br /><br />You may give them your love but not your thoughts,<br />For they have their own thoughts.<br />You may house their bodies but not their souls,<br />For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.<br />You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.<br />For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.<br />You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.<br />The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.<br />Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.<br />For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.