Poems by Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
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It rained outside right into Hadrian's soul.
Whether we write or speak or do but look
If that apparent part of life's delight
When I do think my meanest line shall be
I could not think of thee as piecèd rot,
Oh to be idle loving idleness!
How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,
As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,
Thy words are torture to me, that scarce grieve thee--
How many masks wear we, and undermasks,
As to a child, I talked my heart asleep
Like to a ship that storms urge on its course,
As the lone, frighted user of a night-road
When I should be asleep to mine own voice
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
Beauty and love let no one separate,
Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling
We never joy enjoy to that full point
My love, and not I, is the egoist.
Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,
When in the widening circle of rebirth
Thought was born blind, but Thought knows what is seeing.
My soul is a stiff pageant, man by man,
Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day,
Something in me was born before the stars
My weary life, that lives unsatisfied
We are in Fate and Fate's and do but lack
The world is woven all of dream and error
How yesterday is long ago! The past
The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss
I do not know what truth the false untruth
I am older than Nature and her Time
When I have sense of what to sense appears,
He that goes back does, since he goes, advance,
Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind--
Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad.