Poemas neste tema
Emoções e Sentimentos
Fernando Pessoa
XVII - In a red bacchic surge of thoughts that beat
In a red bacchic surge of thoughts that beat
On the mad temples like an ire's amaze,
In a fury that hurts the eyes, and yet
Doth make all things clear with a blur around,
The whole group's soul like a glad drunkard sways
And bounds up from the ground!
Ay, though all these be common people heaping
To church, from church, the bridal keeping,
Yet all the satyrs and big pagan haunches
That in taut flesh delight and teats and paunches,
And whose course, trailing through the foliage, nears
The crouched nymph that half fears,
In invisible rush, behind, before
This decent group move, and with hot thoughts store
The passive souls round which their mesh they wind,
The while their rout, loud stumbling as if blind,
Makes the hilled earth wake echoing from her sleep
To the lust in their leap.
On the mad temples like an ire's amaze,
In a fury that hurts the eyes, and yet
Doth make all things clear with a blur around,
The whole group's soul like a glad drunkard sways
And bounds up from the ground!
Ay, though all these be common people heaping
To church, from church, the bridal keeping,
Yet all the satyrs and big pagan haunches
That in taut flesh delight and teats and paunches,
And whose course, trailing through the foliage, nears
The crouched nymph that half fears,
In invisible rush, behind, before
This decent group move, and with hot thoughts store
The passive souls round which their mesh they wind,
The while their rout, loud stumbling as if blind,
Makes the hilled earth wake echoing from her sleep
To the lust in their leap.
4 286
Fernando Pessoa
XVIII - Io! Io! There runs a juice of pleasure's rage
Io! Io! There runs a juice of pleasure's rage
Through these frames' mesh,
That now do really ache to strip and wage
Upon each others' flesh
The war that fills the womb and puts milk in
The teats a man did win,
The battle fought with rage to join and fit
And not to hurt or hit!
Io! Io! Be drunken like the day and hour!
Shout, laugh and overpower
With clamour your own thoughts, lest they a breath
Utter of age or death!
Now is all absolute youth, and the small pains
That thrill the filled veins
Themselves are edged in a great tickling joy
That halts ever ere it cloy.
Put out of mind all things save flesh and giving
The male milk that makes living!
Rake out great peals of joy like grass from ground
In your o'ergrown soul found!
Make your great rut dispersedly rejoice
With laugh or voice,
As if all earth, hot sky and tremulous air
A mighty cymbal were!
Through these frames' mesh,
That now do really ache to strip and wage
Upon each others' flesh
The war that fills the womb and puts milk in
The teats a man did win,
The battle fought with rage to join and fit
And not to hurt or hit!
Io! Io! Be drunken like the day and hour!
Shout, laugh and overpower
With clamour your own thoughts, lest they a breath
Utter of age or death!
Now is all absolute youth, and the small pains
That thrill the filled veins
Themselves are edged in a great tickling joy
That halts ever ere it cloy.
Put out of mind all things save flesh and giving
The male milk that makes living!
Rake out great peals of joy like grass from ground
In your o'ergrown soul found!
Make your great rut dispersedly rejoice
With laugh or voice,
As if all earth, hot sky and tremulous air
A mighty cymbal were!
4 652
Fernando Pessoa
XVIII - Io! Io! There runs a juice of pleasure's rage
Io! Io! There runs a juice of pleasure's rage
Through these frames' mesh,
That now do really ache to strip and wage
Upon each others' flesh
The war that fills the womb and puts milk in
The teats a man did win,
The battle fought with rage to join and fit
And not to hurt or hit!
Io! Io! Be drunken like the day and hour!
Shout, laugh and overpower
With clamour your own thoughts, lest they a breath
Utter of age or death!
Now is all absolute youth, and the small pains
That thrill the filled veins
Themselves are edged in a great tickling joy
That halts ever ere it cloy.
Put out of mind all things save flesh and giving
The male milk that makes living!
Rake out great peals of joy like grass from ground
In your o'ergrown soul found!
Make your great rut dispersedly rejoice
With laugh or voice,
As if all earth, hot sky and tremulous air
A mighty cymbal were!
Through these frames' mesh,
That now do really ache to strip and wage
Upon each others' flesh
The war that fills the womb and puts milk in
The teats a man did win,
The battle fought with rage to join and fit
And not to hurt or hit!
Io! Io! Be drunken like the day and hour!
Shout, laugh and overpower
With clamour your own thoughts, lest they a breath
Utter of age or death!
Now is all absolute youth, and the small pains
That thrill the filled veins
Themselves are edged in a great tickling joy
That halts ever ere it cloy.
Put out of mind all things save flesh and giving
The male milk that makes living!
Rake out great peals of joy like grass from ground
In your o'ergrown soul found!
Make your great rut dispersedly rejoice
With laugh or voice,
As if all earth, hot sky and tremulous air
A mighty cymbal were!
4 652
Fernando Pessoa
IX - Oh to be idle loving idleness!
Oh to be idle loving idleness!
But I am idle all in hate of me;
Ever in action's dream, in the false stress
Of purposed action never act to be.
Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,
My will to act binds with excess my action,
Not-acting coils the thought with raged despair,
And acting rage doth paint despair distraction.
Like someone sinking in a treacherous sand,
Each gesture to deliver sinks the more;
The struggle avails not, and to raise no hand,
Though but more slowly useless, we've no power.
Hence live I the dead life each day doth bring,
Repurposed for next day's repurposing.
But I am idle all in hate of me;
Ever in action's dream, in the false stress
Of purposed action never act to be.
Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,
My will to act binds with excess my action,
Not-acting coils the thought with raged despair,
And acting rage doth paint despair distraction.
Like someone sinking in a treacherous sand,
Each gesture to deliver sinks the more;
The struggle avails not, and to raise no hand,
Though but more slowly useless, we've no power.
Hence live I the dead life each day doth bring,
Repurposed for next day's repurposing.
4 154
Fernando Pessoa
IX - Oh to be idle loving idleness!
Oh to be idle loving idleness!
But I am idle all in hate of me;
Ever in action's dream, in the false stress
Of purposed action never act to be.
Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,
My will to act binds with excess my action,
Not-acting coils the thought with raged despair,
And acting rage doth paint despair distraction.
Like someone sinking in a treacherous sand,
Each gesture to deliver sinks the more;
The struggle avails not, and to raise no hand,
Though but more slowly useless, we've no power.
Hence live I the dead life each day doth bring,
Repurposed for next day's repurposing.
But I am idle all in hate of me;
Ever in action's dream, in the false stress
Of purposed action never act to be.
Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,
My will to act binds with excess my action,
Not-acting coils the thought with raged despair,
And acting rage doth paint despair distraction.
Like someone sinking in a treacherous sand,
Each gesture to deliver sinks the more;
The struggle avails not, and to raise no hand,
Though but more slowly useless, we've no power.
Hence live I the dead life each day doth bring,
Repurposed for next day's repurposing.
4 154
Fernando Pessoa
XXXV - Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad.
Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad.
The outer day, void statue of lit blue,
Is altogether outward, other, glad
At mere being not-I (so my aches construe).
I, that have failed in everything, bewail
Nothing this hour but that I have bewailed,
For in the general fate what is't to fail?
Why, fate being past for Fate, 'tis but to have failed.
Whatever hap or stop, what matters it,
Sith to the mattering our will bringeth nought?
With the higher trifling let us world our wit,
Conscious that, if we do t, that was the lot
The regular stars bound us to, when they stood
Godfathers to our birth and to our blood.
The outer day, void statue of lit blue,
Is altogether outward, other, glad
At mere being not-I (so my aches construe).
I, that have failed in everything, bewail
Nothing this hour but that I have bewailed,
For in the general fate what is't to fail?
Why, fate being past for Fate, 'tis but to have failed.
Whatever hap or stop, what matters it,
Sith to the mattering our will bringeth nought?
With the higher trifling let us world our wit,
Conscious that, if we do t, that was the lot
The regular stars bound us to, when they stood
Godfathers to our birth and to our blood.
4 217
Fernando Pessoa
XX - When in the widening circle of rebirth
When in the widening circle of rebirth
To a new flesh my travelled soul shall come,
And try again the unremembered earth
With the old sadness for the immortal home,
Shall I revisit these same differing fields
And cull the old new flowers with the same sense,
That some small breath of foiled remembrance yields,
Of more age than my days in this pretence?
Shall I again regret strange faces lost
Of which the present memory is forgot
And but in unseen bulks of vagueness tossed
Out of the closed sea and black night of Thought?
Were thy face one, what sweetness will't not be.
Though by blind feeling, to remember thee!
To a new flesh my travelled soul shall come,
And try again the unremembered earth
With the old sadness for the immortal home,
Shall I revisit these same differing fields
And cull the old new flowers with the same sense,
That some small breath of foiled remembrance yields,
Of more age than my days in this pretence?
Shall I again regret strange faces lost
Of which the present memory is forgot
And but in unseen bulks of vagueness tossed
Out of the closed sea and black night of Thought?
Were thy face one, what sweetness will't not be.
Though by blind feeling, to remember thee!
4 483
Fernando Pessoa
XXVI - The world is woven all of dream and error
The world is woven all of dream and error
And but one sureness in our truth may lie –
That when we hold to aught our thinking's mirror
We know it not by knowing it thereby.
For but one side of things the mirror knows,
And knows it colded from its solidness.
A double lie its truth is; what it shows
By true show's false and nowhere by true place.
Thought clouds our life's day-sense with strangeness, yet
Never from strangeness more than that it's strange
Doth buy our perplexed thinking, for we get
But the words sense from words – knowledge, truth, change.
We know the world is false, not what is true.
Yet we think on, knowing we ne'er shall know.
And but one sureness in our truth may lie –
That when we hold to aught our thinking's mirror
We know it not by knowing it thereby.
For but one side of things the mirror knows,
And knows it colded from its solidness.
A double lie its truth is; what it shows
By true show's false and nowhere by true place.
Thought clouds our life's day-sense with strangeness, yet
Never from strangeness more than that it's strange
Doth buy our perplexed thinking, for we get
But the words sense from words – knowledge, truth, change.
We know the world is false, not what is true.
Yet we think on, knowing we ne'er shall know.
4 364
Fernando Pessoa
3 - LYCANTHROPY
LYCANTHROPY
Somewhere dreams will be true.
There is a lonely lake
Moonlit for me and you
And like none for our sake.
There the dark white sail spread
To a vague wind unfelt
Shall make our sleep-life led
Towards where the waters melt
Into the black-tree'd shore,
Where the unknown woods meet
The lake's wish to be more,
And make the dream complete.
There we will hide and fade,
Emptly moon-bound all,
Feeling that what we are made
Was something musical.
Somewhere dreams will be true.
There is a lonely lake
Moonlit for me and you
And like none for our sake.
There the dark white sail spread
To a vague wind unfelt
Shall make our sleep-life led
Towards where the waters melt
Into the black-tree'd shore,
Where the unknown woods meet
The lake's wish to be more,
And make the dream complete.
There we will hide and fade,
Emptly moon-bound all,
Feeling that what we are made
Was something musical.
4 182
Fernando Pessoa
XIV - The bridegroom
The bridegroom aches for the end of this and lusts
To know those paps in sucking gusts,
To put his first hand on that belly's hair
And feel for the lipped lair,
The fortress made but to be taken, for which
He feels the battering ram grow large and itch.
The trembling glad bride feels all the day hot
On that still cloistered spot
Where only her nightly maiden hand did feign
A pleasure's empty gain.
And, of the others, most will whisper at this,
Knowing the spurt it is;
And children yet, that watch with looking eyes,
Will now thrill to be wise
In flesh, and with big men and women act
The liquid tickling fact
For whose taste they'll in secret corners try
They scarce know what still dry.
To know those paps in sucking gusts,
To put his first hand on that belly's hair
And feel for the lipped lair,
The fortress made but to be taken, for which
He feels the battering ram grow large and itch.
The trembling glad bride feels all the day hot
On that still cloistered spot
Where only her nightly maiden hand did feign
A pleasure's empty gain.
And, of the others, most will whisper at this,
Knowing the spurt it is;
And children yet, that watch with looking eyes,
Will now thrill to be wise
In flesh, and with big men and women act
The liquid tickling fact
For whose taste they'll in secret corners try
They scarce know what still dry.
4 189
Fernando Pessoa
XIV - The bridegroom
The bridegroom aches for the end of this and lusts
To know those paps in sucking gusts,
To put his first hand on that belly's hair
And feel for the lipped lair,
The fortress made but to be taken, for which
He feels the battering ram grow large and itch.
The trembling glad bride feels all the day hot
On that still cloistered spot
Where only her nightly maiden hand did feign
A pleasure's empty gain.
And, of the others, most will whisper at this,
Knowing the spurt it is;
And children yet, that watch with looking eyes,
Will now thrill to be wise
In flesh, and with big men and women act
The liquid tickling fact
For whose taste they'll in secret corners try
They scarce know what still dry.
To know those paps in sucking gusts,
To put his first hand on that belly's hair
And feel for the lipped lair,
The fortress made but to be taken, for which
He feels the battering ram grow large and itch.
The trembling glad bride feels all the day hot
On that still cloistered spot
Where only her nightly maiden hand did feign
A pleasure's empty gain.
And, of the others, most will whisper at this,
Knowing the spurt it is;
And children yet, that watch with looking eyes,
Will now thrill to be wise
In flesh, and with big men and women act
The liquid tickling fact
For whose taste they'll in secret corners try
They scarce know what still dry.
4 189
Fernando Pessoa
XXVII - How yesterday is long ago! The past
How yesterday is long ago! The past
Is a fixed infinite distance from to-day,
And bygone things, the first-lived as the last,
In irreparable sameness far away.
How the to-be is infinitely ever
Out of the place wherein it will be Now,
Like the seen wave yet far up in the river,
Which reaches not us, but the new-waved flow!
This thing Time is, whose being is having none,
The equable tyrant of our different fates,
Who could not be bought off by a shattered sun
Or tricked by new use of our careful dates.
This thing Time is, that to the grave will bear
My heart, sure but of it and of my fear.
Is a fixed infinite distance from to-day,
And bygone things, the first-lived as the last,
In irreparable sameness far away.
How the to-be is infinitely ever
Out of the place wherein it will be Now,
Like the seen wave yet far up in the river,
Which reaches not us, but the new-waved flow!
This thing Time is, whose being is having none,
The equable tyrant of our different fates,
Who could not be bought off by a shattered sun
Or tricked by new use of our careful dates.
This thing Time is, that to the grave will bear
My heart, sure but of it and of my fear.
4 421
Fernando Pessoa
XV - Even ye, now old, that to this come as to
Even ye, now old, that to this come as to
Your past, your own joy throw
Into the cup, and with the younger drink
That which now makes you think
Of what love was when love was. (For not now
Your winter thoughts allow).
Drink with the hot day, the bride's sad joy and
The bridegroom's haste inreined,
The memory of that day when ye were young
And with great paeans sung
Along the surface of the depths of you,
You paired and the night saw
The day come in and you did still pant close,
And still the half-fallen flesh distending rose.
Your past, your own joy throw
Into the cup, and with the younger drink
That which now makes you think
Of what love was when love was. (For not now
Your winter thoughts allow).
Drink with the hot day, the bride's sad joy and
The bridegroom's haste inreined,
The memory of that day when ye were young
And with great paeans sung
Along the surface of the depths of you,
You paired and the night saw
The day come in and you did still pant close,
And still the half-fallen flesh distending rose.
4 380
Fernando Pessoa
PRAYER
PRAYER
Our lady of Useless Tears,
Thine is my heart's best shrine.
I am sick with the gorging years,
I am drunk with the bitter wine
Of having but cares and fears,
Of knowing but how to pine.
It is useless to pray to thee,
But my heart is full of pain.
Thy glance would be charity,
Even if the look were disdain.
Give me that I may be
A child like thine again.
My sense of me is all tears.
I pity my heart too much.
O a cradle for my fears
And the hem of thy garment to clutch!
O wert thou alive and near us,
And thy hand a hand that could touch!
I do not know how to pray.
My heart is a torn pall.
See how my hair grows gray.
O teach my lips to call
On thy name night and day
As if that name were all.
My fathers' faith doth rise
To my lips this sick hour.
I pray to thee with mine eyes
Rosaries of anguish. O dower
My soul with a least sweet lies
Of thy suffering son's power!
I have forgotten the taste
Of faith, and ache for prayer.
My heart is a garden laid waste.
O thy hand on my hair
Like a mother's hand let rest
And let me die with it there!
Our lady of Useless Tears,
Thine is my heart's best shrine.
I am sick with the gorging years,
I am drunk with the bitter wine
Of having but cares and fears,
Of knowing but how to pine.
It is useless to pray to thee,
But my heart is full of pain.
Thy glance would be charity,
Even if the look were disdain.
Give me that I may be
A child like thine again.
My sense of me is all tears.
I pity my heart too much.
O a cradle for my fears
And the hem of thy garment to clutch!
O wert thou alive and near us,
And thy hand a hand that could touch!
I do not know how to pray.
My heart is a torn pall.
See how my hair grows gray.
O teach my lips to call
On thy name night and day
As if that name were all.
My fathers' faith doth rise
To my lips this sick hour.
I pray to thee with mine eyes
Rosaries of anguish. O dower
My soul with a least sweet lies
Of thy suffering son's power!
I have forgotten the taste
Of faith, and ache for prayer.
My heart is a garden laid waste.
O thy hand on my hair
Like a mother's hand let rest
And let me die with it there!
4 670
Fernando Pessoa
PRAYER
PRAYER
Our lady of Useless Tears,
Thine is my heart's best shrine.
I am sick with the gorging years,
I am drunk with the bitter wine
Of having but cares and fears,
Of knowing but how to pine.
It is useless to pray to thee,
But my heart is full of pain.
Thy glance would be charity,
Even if the look were disdain.
Give me that I may be
A child like thine again.
My sense of me is all tears.
I pity my heart too much.
O a cradle for my fears
And the hem of thy garment to clutch!
O wert thou alive and near us,
And thy hand a hand that could touch!
I do not know how to pray.
My heart is a torn pall.
See how my hair grows gray.
O teach my lips to call
On thy name night and day
As if that name were all.
My fathers' faith doth rise
To my lips this sick hour.
I pray to thee with mine eyes
Rosaries of anguish. O dower
My soul with a least sweet lies
Of thy suffering son's power!
I have forgotten the taste
Of faith, and ache for prayer.
My heart is a garden laid waste.
O thy hand on my hair
Like a mother's hand let rest
And let me die with it there!
Our lady of Useless Tears,
Thine is my heart's best shrine.
I am sick with the gorging years,
I am drunk with the bitter wine
Of having but cares and fears,
Of knowing but how to pine.
It is useless to pray to thee,
But my heart is full of pain.
Thy glance would be charity,
Even if the look were disdain.
Give me that I may be
A child like thine again.
My sense of me is all tears.
I pity my heart too much.
O a cradle for my fears
And the hem of thy garment to clutch!
O wert thou alive and near us,
And thy hand a hand that could touch!
I do not know how to pray.
My heart is a torn pall.
See how my hair grows gray.
O teach my lips to call
On thy name night and day
As if that name were all.
My fathers' faith doth rise
To my lips this sick hour.
I pray to thee with mine eyes
Rosaries of anguish. O dower
My soul with a least sweet lies
Of thy suffering son's power!
I have forgotten the taste
Of faith, and ache for prayer.
My heart is a garden laid waste.
O thy hand on my hair
Like a mother's hand let rest
And let me die with it there!
4 670
Fernando Pessoa
15 - THE NIGHT‑LIGHT
THE WRONG CHOICE
THE NIGHT LIGHT
Nurse, I known now
That love is vain.
When I was small
You used to sing
And soothe my brow
Till calm seemed pain.
That song recall
And to me bring.
I wish to feel
Again that child
That you made sleep
Singing so low,
So low that real
Things were beguiled
To make me weep
At seeing them go.
Nurse, by my bed
Sing me again
That song. I love
Hoping for't now.
My heart has bled
Till joy seems pain.
Sing softly above
My caressed brow
O regions lost
In dreams and sleep!
O fairy tales
You did not tell,
But that were tossed
Out of the deep
Of your song's waves
And surge and spell!
Sing as if you
Were listening.
Sing as if I
Had no more world
Than all night through
Hearing you sing,
While my breath sly
On my breast curled.
Why did I live
Beyond those hours
When you sung songs
Perhaps of queens
My dream believes,
Perhaps of flowers,
Whose lost scent throngs
Through my sense-screens?
Why did I lose
What I had not
But was your voice,
My heart and night?
Why did I choose
Life, love and thought,
With a wrong choice
And a false right?
Lullaby nurse,
Again for me.
Sing 'till I find
My heart less lone,
And life, life's hearse,
Leaving dreams free,
Shrink undefined
Into the Unknown.
You are no more
My nurse that sings,
My childhood een
Made me again.
No: you are the hour
Of sleep, that brings
That scene no-scene,
That pain no-pain;
Hallowed and dim,
Brotherly night,
Wherein my soul
Is haunted past
The hollow rim
Of my delight
And the low dole
Of pain and haste;
Merged in the dark,
Sunk past the bed
Into a peace
Of being nought,
Shadowy bark
Abandoned,
Abstract release
From self and thought.
THE NIGHT LIGHT
Nurse, I known now
That love is vain.
When I was small
You used to sing
And soothe my brow
Till calm seemed pain.
That song recall
And to me bring.
I wish to feel
Again that child
That you made sleep
Singing so low,
So low that real
Things were beguiled
To make me weep
At seeing them go.
Nurse, by my bed
Sing me again
That song. I love
Hoping for't now.
My heart has bled
Till joy seems pain.
Sing softly above
My caressed brow
O regions lost
In dreams and sleep!
O fairy tales
You did not tell,
But that were tossed
Out of the deep
Of your song's waves
And surge and spell!
Sing as if you
Were listening.
Sing as if I
Had no more world
Than all night through
Hearing you sing,
While my breath sly
On my breast curled.
Why did I live
Beyond those hours
When you sung songs
Perhaps of queens
My dream believes,
Perhaps of flowers,
Whose lost scent throngs
Through my sense-screens?
Why did I lose
What I had not
But was your voice,
My heart and night?
Why did I choose
Life, love and thought,
With a wrong choice
And a false right?
Lullaby nurse,
Again for me.
Sing 'till I find
My heart less lone,
And life, life's hearse,
Leaving dreams free,
Shrink undefined
Into the Unknown.
You are no more
My nurse that sings,
My childhood een
Made me again.
No: you are the hour
Of sleep, that brings
That scene no-scene,
That pain no-pain;
Hallowed and dim,
Brotherly night,
Wherein my soul
Is haunted past
The hollow rim
Of my delight
And the low dole
Of pain and haste;
Merged in the dark,
Sunk past the bed
Into a peace
Of being nought,
Shadowy bark
Abandoned,
Abstract release
From self and thought.
4 389
Fernando Pessoa
15 - THE NIGHT‑LIGHT
THE WRONG CHOICE
THE NIGHT LIGHT
Nurse, I known now
That love is vain.
When I was small
You used to sing
And soothe my brow
Till calm seemed pain.
That song recall
And to me bring.
I wish to feel
Again that child
That you made sleep
Singing so low,
So low that real
Things were beguiled
To make me weep
At seeing them go.
Nurse, by my bed
Sing me again
That song. I love
Hoping for't now.
My heart has bled
Till joy seems pain.
Sing softly above
My caressed brow
O regions lost
In dreams and sleep!
O fairy tales
You did not tell,
But that were tossed
Out of the deep
Of your song's waves
And surge and spell!
Sing as if you
Were listening.
Sing as if I
Had no more world
Than all night through
Hearing you sing,
While my breath sly
On my breast curled.
Why did I live
Beyond those hours
When you sung songs
Perhaps of queens
My dream believes,
Perhaps of flowers,
Whose lost scent throngs
Through my sense-screens?
Why did I lose
What I had not
But was your voice,
My heart and night?
Why did I choose
Life, love and thought,
With a wrong choice
And a false right?
Lullaby nurse,
Again for me.
Sing 'till I find
My heart less lone,
And life, life's hearse,
Leaving dreams free,
Shrink undefined
Into the Unknown.
You are no more
My nurse that sings,
My childhood een
Made me again.
No: you are the hour
Of sleep, that brings
That scene no-scene,
That pain no-pain;
Hallowed and dim,
Brotherly night,
Wherein my soul
Is haunted past
The hollow rim
Of my delight
And the low dole
Of pain and haste;
Merged in the dark,
Sunk past the bed
Into a peace
Of being nought,
Shadowy bark
Abandoned,
Abstract release
From self and thought.
THE NIGHT LIGHT
Nurse, I known now
That love is vain.
When I was small
You used to sing
And soothe my brow
Till calm seemed pain.
That song recall
And to me bring.
I wish to feel
Again that child
That you made sleep
Singing so low,
So low that real
Things were beguiled
To make me weep
At seeing them go.
Nurse, by my bed
Sing me again
That song. I love
Hoping for't now.
My heart has bled
Till joy seems pain.
Sing softly above
My caressed brow
O regions lost
In dreams and sleep!
O fairy tales
You did not tell,
But that were tossed
Out of the deep
Of your song's waves
And surge and spell!
Sing as if you
Were listening.
Sing as if I
Had no more world
Than all night through
Hearing you sing,
While my breath sly
On my breast curled.
Why did I live
Beyond those hours
When you sung songs
Perhaps of queens
My dream believes,
Perhaps of flowers,
Whose lost scent throngs
Through my sense-screens?
Why did I lose
What I had not
But was your voice,
My heart and night?
Why did I choose
Life, love and thought,
With a wrong choice
And a false right?
Lullaby nurse,
Again for me.
Sing 'till I find
My heart less lone,
And life, life's hearse,
Leaving dreams free,
Shrink undefined
Into the Unknown.
You are no more
My nurse that sings,
My childhood een
Made me again.
No: you are the hour
Of sleep, that brings
That scene no-scene,
That pain no-pain;
Hallowed and dim,
Brotherly night,
Wherein my soul
Is haunted past
The hollow rim
Of my delight
And the low dole
Of pain and haste;
Merged in the dark,
Sunk past the bed
Into a peace
Of being nought,
Shadowy bark
Abandoned,
Abstract release
From self and thought.
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XXX - I do not know what truth the false untruth
I do not know what truth the false untruth
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,
Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit
Unto the true reality unknown.
But as the rainbow, neither earth's nor sky's,
Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain,
A hope, note real yet not fancy's, lies
Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.
Somehow, since pain is felt yet felt as ill,
Hope hath a better warrant than being hoped;
Since pain is felt as aught we should not feel
Man hath a Nature's reason for having groped,
Since Time was Time and age and grief his measures
Towards a better shelter than Time's pleasures.
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,
Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit
Unto the true reality unknown.
But as the rainbow, neither earth's nor sky's,
Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain,
A hope, note real yet not fancy's, lies
Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.
Somehow, since pain is felt yet felt as ill,
Hope hath a better warrant than being hoped;
Since pain is felt as aught we should not feel
Man hath a Nature's reason for having groped,
Since Time was Time and age and grief his measures
Towards a better shelter than Time's pleasures.
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Fernando Pessoa
XXX - I do not know what truth the false untruth
I do not know what truth the false untruth
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,
Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit
Unto the true reality unknown.
But as the rainbow, neither earth's nor sky's,
Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain,
A hope, note real yet not fancy's, lies
Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.
Somehow, since pain is felt yet felt as ill,
Hope hath a better warrant than being hoped;
Since pain is felt as aught we should not feel
Man hath a Nature's reason for having groped,
Since Time was Time and age and grief his measures
Towards a better shelter than Time's pleasures.
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,
Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit
Unto the true reality unknown.
But as the rainbow, neither earth's nor sky's,
Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain,
A hope, note real yet not fancy's, lies
Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.
Somehow, since pain is felt yet felt as ill,
Hope hath a better warrant than being hoped;
Since pain is felt as aught we should not feel
Man hath a Nature's reason for having groped,
Since Time was Time and age and grief his measures
Towards a better shelter than Time's pleasures.
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Fernando Pessoa
XXIX - My weary life, that lives unsatisfied
My weary life, that lives unsatisfied
On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,
To whom the power to will hath been denied
And the will to renounce doth also miss;
My sated life, with having nothing sated,
In the motion of moving poised aye,
Within its dreams from its own dreams abated –
This life let the Gods change or take away.
For this endless succession of empty hours,
Like deserts after deserts, voidly one,
Doth undermine the very dreaming powers
And dull even thought's active inaction,
Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act
Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.
On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,
To whom the power to will hath been denied
And the will to renounce doth also miss;
My sated life, with having nothing sated,
In the motion of moving poised aye,
Within its dreams from its own dreams abated –
This life let the Gods change or take away.
For this endless succession of empty hours,
Like deserts after deserts, voidly one,
Doth undermine the very dreaming powers
And dull even thought's active inaction,
Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act
Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.
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Fernando Pessoa
XXIX - My weary life, that lives unsatisfied
My weary life, that lives unsatisfied
On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,
To whom the power to will hath been denied
And the will to renounce doth also miss;
My sated life, with having nothing sated,
In the motion of moving poised aye,
Within its dreams from its own dreams abated –
This life let the Gods change or take away.
For this endless succession of empty hours,
Like deserts after deserts, voidly one,
Doth undermine the very dreaming powers
And dull even thought's active inaction,
Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act
Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.
On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,
To whom the power to will hath been denied
And the will to renounce doth also miss;
My sated life, with having nothing sated,
In the motion of moving poised aye,
Within its dreams from its own dreams abated –
This life let the Gods change or take away.
For this endless succession of empty hours,
Like deserts after deserts, voidly one,
Doth undermine the very dreaming powers
And dull even thought's active inaction,
Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act
Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.
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Fernando Pessoa
XXIX - My weary life, that lives unsatisfied
My weary life, that lives unsatisfied
On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,
To whom the power to will hath been denied
And the will to renounce doth also miss;
My sated life, with having nothing sated,
In the motion of moving poised aye,
Within its dreams from its own dreams abated –
This life let the Gods change or take away.
For this endless succession of empty hours,
Like deserts after deserts, voidly one,
Doth undermine the very dreaming powers
And dull even thought's active inaction,
Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act
Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.
On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,
To whom the power to will hath been denied
And the will to renounce doth also miss;
My sated life, with having nothing sated,
In the motion of moving poised aye,
Within its dreams from its own dreams abated –
This life let the Gods change or take away.
For this endless succession of empty hours,
Like deserts after deserts, voidly one,
Doth undermine the very dreaming powers
And dull even thought's active inaction,
Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act
Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.
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Fernando Pessoa
XXVIII - The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss
The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss
Upon the wetted sand. I look, yet dream.
Surely reality cannot be this!
Somehow, somewhere this surely doth but seem!
The sky, the sea, this great extent disclosed
Of outward joy, this bulk of life we feel,
Is not something, but something interposed.
Only what in this is not this is real.
If this be to have sense, if to be awake
Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things,
For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take
And for truth commune with imaginings,
Holding a dream too bitter, a too fair curse,
This common sleep of men, the universe.
Upon the wetted sand. I look, yet dream.
Surely reality cannot be this!
Somehow, somewhere this surely doth but seem!
The sky, the sea, this great extent disclosed
Of outward joy, this bulk of life we feel,
Is not something, but something interposed.
Only what in this is not this is real.
If this be to have sense, if to be awake
Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things,
For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take
And for truth commune with imaginings,
Holding a dream too bitter, a too fair curse,
This common sleep of men, the universe.
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Fernando Pessoa
XXXIV - Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind —
Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind –
All who, stamped separate by curtailing birth,
Owe no duty's allegiance to mankind
Nor stand a valuing in their scheme of worth!
But I, whom Fate, not Nature, did curtail,
By no exterior voidness being exempt,
Must bear accusing glances where I fail,
Fixed in the general orbit of contempt.
Fate, less than Nature in being kind to lacking,
Giving the ill, shows not as outer cause,
Making our mock-free will the mirror's backing
Which Fate s own acts as if in itself shows;
And men, like children, seeing the image there,
Take place for cause and make our will Fate bear.
All who, stamped separate by curtailing birth,
Owe no duty's allegiance to mankind
Nor stand a valuing in their scheme of worth!
But I, whom Fate, not Nature, did curtail,
By no exterior voidness being exempt,
Must bear accusing glances where I fail,
Fixed in the general orbit of contempt.
Fate, less than Nature in being kind to lacking,
Giving the ill, shows not as outer cause,
Making our mock-free will the mirror's backing
Which Fate s own acts as if in itself shows;
And men, like children, seeing the image there,
Take place for cause and make our will Fate bear.
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