Alma

Before light was, light's bright idea lit
        God's thought of it,
And, because through God's thought light's thought did pass,
        Light ever was,
And from beyond eternity became
        The living flame
That trembles into life and reddens with
        Our life's soul‑width.

Before light was, when yet the night was queen
        O'er what had been,
In God's realized prescience it could be
        Light from eternity,
For no time enters into God's thoughts or
        Their spaceless Hour.

Take thou therefore, my Song, from light the mood
        Of being, and brood,
Like the Dove unbegot, over the abyss
        Of consciousness,
Taking as thy true part that thought of God
        Whence light issued.

Let my words burst into that divine flame
        That lights its name
Of each thing from within with ultimate meaning.
        Though earth be screening
With fixed appearance the Sun in each Thing,
        Bear, on thy wing
High‑lifted, rays from the unrisen Sun
        Whence life is spun.

Soar out, my Song, out of despair and night
        And catch that light
Ere it appear, from neath the horizon
        Of action,
Borne out of dreams by intuition bright
        Of endless light.

Though none believe nor any understand,
        Yet feel thee fanned
With those breeze‑breaths that come up with the morn
        From the Unborn.
Soar like a lark into the coming day
        And bear thy way
Into the possibility of noon
        Hid in the dawn.

No matter that none know what thy words speak.
        A day shall break
Out of eternity as each day bright
        Out of each night.
Thy wings shall touch the slanting light of dawn
        And, upwards drawn
By being light‑struck, shall to light be near
        When light's yet far.

Hope is thy ready and high‑soaring flight
        Out of the night,
Joy is thy touching of the first high rays
        That day betrays,
Life is the course thy flight sequesters from
        Earth and its nightly doom,
And these three things are one in thy belief
        That pain is brief.

II

Thou, unseeen Bird, essence of spiritual light,
        That yet art bright
With the epitome of the outer shine,
        Thou that art mine
And yet not mine but general to the earth,
        Wings of rebirth,
Whose song, though in me heard, participates
        Of all that all elates,
Thou point of meeting of me with the wings
        Hidden in all things,
Thou breath, thou vapour, seen and not seen, of
        Some abstract love,
Thou exhalation of the prisoned flight
        Of all things' weight,
Thou that in me art fear, mad splendour, all
        To ache and enthral,

Attract me, take me, o pure flight, and rise
        With me in thine eyes,
Lost, cast, unpetalled and divine, up to
        What thou dost woo!

O Spirit‑Lark that wakest ere the morn
        And art reborn
At each recoming of the sun, and art
        The wiser part
Of all that message is to our low eyes
        Of what shall rise!
Life‑weightless Bird that no meads can attract,
        But that must act
Its fate in air, above our marshes sad
        And meads low‑laid,
In free heights communing with the Great Horn
        As yet unborn!
O sterile Bird that hast no nest nor home
        But what shall come,
That hast no song save in the heights above
        Nests, homes and love,
Nor any thought save for the coming day,
        Though far away
It seem to those who measure yet thy flight
        But by its height
And not by its intention, that is carried
        From life and married
To those diviner hours that winged things
        Find with their wings!
O Bird of ruthless song and untold wishes,
        Whose high flight reaches
Heights not of earth, but of pure air, encumbered
        With no joys weighed and numbered!
Take all my heart in thy purpose of going
        And make the flowing
Down to earth of my song be like thy song,
        Something strange, strong
With distance, eerily half‑perishing
        From farness! Sing,
And let my heart be what thou meanst with singings
        My life with winging.
My hopes and fears with th’tone wherewith thy note
        To me doth float
And the great purpose hidden in my fate
        With thy mere height!

My heart shall thus be happy even if pained,
        Free even if strained
To keep that height of joy whence tremble down
        Thy songs to our own.
My soul may thus be happy, full and free.
        Oh, happily
Raise me from me and lift my life unto
        That thou dost woo -
The light, the sky, the distance and the morn,
        Till I be unborn
Again to pure dispersion in the seas
        Of the high breeze
That speaks to thee, ere light be born, of light,
        Till the delight
Of without being being shall make me
        Song and sky be!

Chalice of my communion
        With the lost thing that gleams!
Communion‑bond of union
        Between me and my dreams!
O chalice of love's most!
In thy wine, earth's wine's ghost
        To lips that are God's flowers,
My soul has dipped the host
        Of my diviner hours.

My lips are as lips kissed.
        My sad soul happy sings.
O shining through the mist
        Of tremulous angels' wings!
I feel me God's moon's node,
A child again, outside life's road,
        Remembering how I found me
When I awoke from God
        And felt the world around me.

Não leio já; queria abrir um livro
E ver, de chofre, ali, a ciência toda...
Queria ao menos poder crer que, lendo,
E em prolongadas horas lendo e lendo,
No fim alguma cousa me ficava
Do essencial do mundo, que eu subia
Até ao menos cada vez mais perto
Do mistério... Que ele, inda que inatingido,
Ao menos dele que eu [me] aproximava...
Não fosse tudo um (...)
Como uma criança que a fingir sobe
Uns degraus que pintou no chão...

Não leio. Horas intérminas, perdido
De tudo, salvo de uma dolorosa
Consciência vazia de mim próprio,
Como um frio numa noite intensa,
Em frente ao livro aberto vivo e morro...
Nada... E a impaciência fria e dolorosa
De ler p'ra não sonhar e ter perdido
O sonho! Assim como um (...) engenho
Que, abandonado, em vão trabalha ainda,
Sem nexo, sem propósito, eu môo
E remôo a ilusão do pensamento...
E hora a hora na minha estéril alma
Mais fundo o abismo entre meu ser e mim
Se abre, e nesse (...) abismo não há nada...

Ditoso o tempo em que eu sonhava, e às vezes
Eu parava de ler para seguir
Os cortejos em mim... Amor, orgulho,
— Crenças inda! — pintavam os meus sonhos...
E com muita insistência[?], eu era (...)
O amante de belezas (...)
E o rei de povos vagos e submissos;
E quer em braços que eu sonhava, ou entre
As filas (...) prostradas, eu vivia
Sublimes nadas, alegrias sem cor.
Mas
Hoje nenhuma imagem, nenhum vulto
Evoco em mim... Só um deserto aonde
Não a cor dum areal, nem um ar morto
Posso sonhar... Mas tendo só a ideia,
Tendo da cor o pensamento apenas,
Vazio, oco, sem calor nem frio,
Sem posição, nem direcção, nem (...)
Só o vazio lugar do pensamento...

Lilies cast and roses throw
In the way that she must go
Whom the singing planets hymn,
Sister of the seraphim!

Shifting motes of early sun
In the morning freshness spun
To light dresses for the breeze -
Clothe her coming such as these!

Shadows purple, fountain breaths,
Low mists such as dawning wreathes
Round the tree‑tops - these be made
Hers, for whom spring's feast is laid!

She to us from heaven descended
That dreams might with earth seem blended,
And unquietness more blest
Mingle with our life's unrest.

These the chosen offerings
From what earthly deep joy sings -
These to her we daily bear
Lest she pine for heaven here.

Let them speak ill of me. I do not care
Why shouldst thou care that fairer art than I?
My lips so oft have rested on thy hair,
So oft on thy lips, and so oft
On thy white arms that yet pretend to lie
On my dreams cushions like a vague thing soft...

Let them speak. Life is sweet if thy lips mean
Life. Love is sweet if thou art love.
The scorners cannot know what kisses screen
Our throbbing heart from heart nor prove
That full possession our mad love can scene
With perverse actions like an empire's end
That sinks among the galleys and doth blend
Its sunset with the landscape's emerald green.

Let them speak. Put thy hand within my hand
And let us love as maid and boy are said
To love. But we are none and love is red
On our hot souls thrill and understand.
Oh, to thy bed!

Oh to thy bed, fairer than maidens' couches
And curtained over with strange care for strangeness,
Let's to thy bed and kiss naked while touches
Selected from our hotter dreams transcend
Lust with thought lust acted upon our frames.
The magic misery of our wedded names
Shall light the future with impassioned strangeness.

Antinous!

Quero, da vida, só não conhecê-la.
Bastam, a quem o Fado pôs na vida,
        As formas sucessórias
        Da vida insubsistente.
Pouco serve pensar que são eternos
Os nossos nadas com que na alma amamos
         Os outros pobres nadas
        Que (...)
Gratos aos deuses, menos pela incerta
Posse do sonhado certo, recolhamos
        A mercê passageira
        De instantes que não duram.

Tenho uma ideia comigo
De que não quero falar.
Se a ideia fosse um postigo,
Era p’ra te ver passar.

I had a self and life
        Before this life and self.
When the moon makes woods rife
        With possible fay or elf,
There comes in me a dreaming
That is like a light gleaming
        Somewhere in me away,
On seas that I have known
And placeless lands that own
        Another kind of day.

I dream, and as a blast
        Fans into fire an ember,
My heart gleams with a past
        That I cannot remember.
And as the ember's glowing
Is not fire but fire's showing,
        I waste the empty pelf
Of my mute sense of me.
As rain within the sea
        I fade within myself.

There are mazes of I.
        I am my unknown being.
I have, I know not why,
        Another kind of seeing
(Other than this vain vision
That is my soul's division
        From what girds sight about)
Where to see is to know,
Whose life is faith, and woe
        Fled by the hand of Doubt.

My life has happy hours:
        'Tis when I feel not living;
And, as the scent of flowers
        Round flowers a flower‑soul weaving
That is a corporate spirit,
From myself I inherit,
        My soul's blood's spirit‑air,
A foreself and inself
Which is the being‑pelf
        That with God's loss I share.

Ai, os pratos de arroz-doce
Com as linhas de canela!
Ai a mão branca que os trouxe!
Ai essa mão ser a dela!

........IV

Doura o dia. Silente, o vento dura.
Verde as árvores, mole a terra escura,
Onde flores, vazia a álea e os bancos.
No pinhal erva cresce nos barrancos.
Nuvens vagas no pérfido horizonte.
O moinho longínquo no ermo monte.
Eu alma, que contempla tudo isto,
Nada conhece e tudo reconhece.
Nestas sombras de me sentir existo,
E é falsa a teia que tecer me tece.

II

Dói viver, nada sou que valha ser.
Tardo-me porque penso e tudo rui.
Tento saber, porque tentar é ser.
Longe de isto ser tudo, tudo flui.

Mágoa que, indiferente, faz viver.
Névoa que, diferente, em tudo influi.
O exílio nada do que foi sequer
Ilude, fixa, dá, faz ou possui.

Assim, nocturna, a áreas indecisas,
O prelúdio perdido traz à mente
O que das ilhas mortas foi só brisas,

E o que a memória análoga dedica
Ao sonho, e onde, lua na corrente,
Não passa o sonho e a água inútil fica.

O voice the angels kissed when unbreathed yet!
O lips made spiritual with uttering it!
O eyes wild with the lust of the divine
In thy felt presence, making thee its shrine!
O that this moment of thee were Thyself!
That thou ne’er fell'st from this Thou, and the pelf
Of gathered days with avarice of living,
Touched thee not from this moment of God's giving!
O eternal actuality of thee!
O by thy voice sculptured immutably
In some stone‑flesh of spirit! O set free
From being all contained in being seen!
O firmament of joy purely serene
With spaciousness of soul and stars of song
Above thyself, God's human heights among!

Sing on, and let thy singing be a couch
To that of me which to my soul doth vouch
Of God as of a self and of a home!
Dissolve me to thy notes! Make me become
An outside of myself, and have in me
Nought but a selfless sense of hearing thee!
Let me pertain to the sounds thou dost voice!
Let me be other than I and rejoice
Hearing time like a breeze pass by the place
Thy song imprisons in its halcyon grace!

Thy voice compels to parapets from heaven
Dim winged happinesses whence is woven
To our souls such a glamour, spirit‑fair,
That, feeling it, all life becomes despair
And all the sense of life to wish to die.
Sing on! Between the music's human cry
And thy song's meaning there is interposed
Some third reality, less life‑enclosed,
Some subtler tenderness than music makes
Or words sung, and its moonless moonlight takes
Our visionary moods by their child‑hand
And our tired steps begin to understand.

Sing, nor stop singing till bliss ache too much!
O that I could, without moving my hand,
Stretch forth some hand imaginary and touch
That body of thine thy singing giveth thee!
That kiss‑like touch would wake eternity
In me again, and, as by a great morn,
The night my body makes of me were torn
Away from being, and my unbodied shape
Would, like a ship doubling the final cape,
Come to that sight of port and shiver of coming
That God allows to those whose bliss of roaming
Is no more than the wish to find His peace
And mingle with it as a scent with the breeze.

I could not be thou, being yet not thou
Were I not God; so to God my thoughts go
(To reach thee, to possess from within
To possess from being not from seeing)
Because, substance of substance, He alone
Can love being all things, and all in each one.
Thus is my love (...) religion.


And by being born, not born; by being love
None; and by being made move, not made to move,
But, indefinable and indistinct,
Wearing no form nor purpose nor precinct
Of use, it hangs, with my soul in its wake
An interval between me and thee, between
Ourselves and God, between thou being but seen
And being loved, abstract absance of place
(...) that
Life, substance of thou being a living thing
Where thought and will and feeling are one thing.


Of the two parts of love, becoming other
And unbecoming self, I do one choose —
The unbecoming, and the other lose.
Yet, as to unbecome must be becoming
Some other thing, as the end for roaming
Makes the thing found where will no matter binds,
The unbecoming of me sure love finds.
Yet if it finds the loved thing, yet not thee,
What thing finds it, that it sought not to be?
What but love's own abstraction, interval
Between souls. And as aether is purest of all
Where filling the mere spaces between things,
Because the more unmixed, the love that clings
To my large disembodiment is best,
Because no object, save love, limits its
(…)
But here not aether but consciousness is
The universal substance, so in this
Less difference between this substance and
God is there — so, if right I understand,
This love which to obtain thee loses thee
And which to complete me uncompletes me,
Which the mere interval doth occupy
Whether neither thy soul nor my soul doth lie,
To which my mere love's force abstractly sends
My void outgoing, and there my being ends,
And so the ends my being had in going
Equally endeth — this love thus foregoing
The object and the subject to be done
By missing into pure Relation;
This love finds God by its internal force,
For when all things are lost God is the loss.

See then how I, starting from me to thee,
Have like a sailor that sets out i' th' sea
For some shore, and the winds drive him away
And this chance casts him on some better bay
Than his intention had been to discover.
Yet if discovering were intended, ever
By what discovered is, where it not willed,
The purpose of discovering is filled,
And if the unwilled discovery is better,
The loss is gam, and that which seemed to fetter
The original purpose, the harsh wind,
Does lead the unled to where he best can find.

Yet this is not the journey's end, for whence
The sailor now arrived, to recommence
He may begin his voyage original
And from the better to the worse recall
For as the original purpose, better less,
Is in the found included, he may thence
His foiled task recompose and now to miss
The purpose that his (...)
So I, from God, the better may go out
To thee, and from within thee, not about
Thy presence, enter into thee and be
The very personality of thee.

FAUSTO: (só)
Ondas de aspiração que vãs morreis
Sem mesmo o coração e alma atingir
Do vosso sentimento; ondas de pranto,
Não vos posso chorar, e em mim subis,
Maré imensa rumorosa e surda,
Para morrer na praia do limite
Que a vida impõe ao Ser; ondas saudosas
D'algum mar alto Aonde a praia seja
Um sonho inútil, ou d'alguma terra
Desconhecida mais que a eterna aura
Do eterno sofrimento, e onde formas
Dos olhos d'alma não imaginadas
Vagam, essências lúcidas e (...)
Esquecidas daquilo que chamamos
Suspiro, lágrima, desolação;
Ondas nas quais não posso visionar,
Nem dentro em mim, em sonho, barco ou ilha,
Nem esperança transitória, nem
Ilusão nada da desilusão;
Oh ondas sem brancuras, asperezas,
Mas redondas, como óleos e silentes
No vosso intérmino e total rumor...
Oh ondas d'alma, decaí em lago
Ou levantai-vos ásperas e brancas
Com o sussurro ácido da espuma
Erguei em tempestades no meu ser.
Vós sois um mar sem céu, sem luz, sem ar
Sentido, visto não, rumorejante
Sobre o fundo profundo da minha alma!
Lágrimas, sinto em mim vosso amargor!
Não vos quero chorar. Se vos chorasse
Como chegar — tantas! — ao vosso fim?
Chegado ao vosso fim que encontraria?
Talvez uma aridez desesperada
Uma ânsia vã de não poder trazer-vos
Outra vez para mim para chorar-vos
Em vã consolação inda outra vez!

Não haver alma, inda ideia vã!
Havê-la e imortal, sonho pequeno
De término[?], embora coerente
À sua pequenez. Que mais? Havê-la,
Havê-la e ser mortal, morrer num Todo
Celeste? Vago, vão. Não haverá
Além da morte e da imortalidade
Qualquer cousa maior? Ah, deve haver
Além de vida e morte, ser, não ser,
Um Inominável supertranscendente
Eterno Incógnito e incognoscível!
Deus? Nojo. Céu, inferno? Nojo, nojo.
P'ra quê pensar, se há-de parar aqui
O curto voo do entendimento?
Mais além! Pensamento, mais além!

Saído apenas duma infância
Incertamente triste e diferente

Uma vez contemplando dum outeiro
A tinha de colinas majestosa
Que azulada e em perfis desaparecia
No horizonte, contemplando os campos,
Vi de repente como que tudo
Desaparecer, tomando (...)

E um abismo invisível, uma cousa
Nem parecida com a existência
Ocupar não o espaço, mas o modo
Com que eu pensava o visível.

E então o horror supremo que jamais
Deixei depois, mas que aumentando e sendo
O mesmo sempre,
Ocupou-me...
Oh primeira visão interior
Do mistério infinito, em que ruiu
A minha vida juvenil numa hora!

Why do I desire
What I do not need?
Why does my soul, like fire,
Or a hot abstract greed,
Seek all that is higher?

Why, if not because
It is a soul? (...)
Who can know the cause
When it lies in its whole
Hidden in (...) laws?

Yet this matters not.
What matters is pining
And that stress of thought
That comes of divining
What to wish that may not be got.

A. Caeiro

Jovem morreste, porque regressaste,
Ó deus inconsciente, onde teus pares
        De após Cronos te esperam
        Ressuscitados deles.

Antes de ti já era a Natureza,
Mas não a alma de compreendê-la.
        Deu-te o deus o instinto
        Com que sentir as cousas.

Os deuses imortais reconduziste
À humana visão obscurecida
        (...)
        (...)

Sós ficamos, mas não abandonados,
Porque a obra, que deixaste, és tu ainda
        Qual luz à extinta estrela
        Póstuma a terra alaga.

Por seu os deuses contam quem
E com teu nome a divindade prestas
        De ser eterna à pátria
        Odisseia cidade

Igual des ti às sete que contendem,
Cidades por Homero, ou alcaica Lesbos,
        Ou heptápila Tebas
        Ogígia mãe de Píndaro.

Frescura do que é regado,
Por onde a água inda verte...
Quero dizer-te um bocado
Do que não ouso dizer-te.

O mistério supremo do Universo
O único mistério, tudo e em tudo
É haver um mistério do universo,
É haver o universo, qualquer cousa,
É haver haver. Ó forma abstracta e vaga
Que tão corrente haver em mim demora
Que pensar isto é-me no corpo um frio
Que sopra d'além terra e d'além-túmulo
E vai da alma a Deus.

Sob estas árvores ou aquelas árvores
        Conduzi a dança,
Conduzi a dança, ninfas singelas
        Até ao amplo gozo
Que tomais da vida. Conduzi a dança
        E sê quase humanas
Com o vosso gozo derramado em ritmos
        Em ritmos solenes
Que a nossa alegria torna maliciosos
        Para nossa triste
Vida que não sabe sob as mesmas árvores
        Conduzir a dança...

Somewhere where I shall never live
        A palace garden bowers
Such beauty that dreams of it grieve.

There, lining walks immemorial,
        Great antenatal flowers
My lost life before God recall.

There I was happy and the child
        That had cool shadows
Wherein to feel sweetly exiled.

They took all these true things away.
        O my lost meadows!
My childhood before Night and Day!

O mistério dos olhos e do olhar
Do sujeito e do objecto, transparente
Ao horror que além dele está; o mudo
Sentimento de se desconhecer,
E a confrangida comoção que nasce
De sentir a loucura do vazio;
O horror duma existência incompreendida
Quando à alma se chega desse horror
Faz toda a dor humana uma ilusão.
Essa é a suprema dor, a vera cruz.
Querem desdenhar o teu sentir orgulho
Oh, Cristo!

Então eu vejo — horror — a íntima alma,
O perene mistério que atravessa
Como um suspiro céus e corações.

There is no peace save where I am not,
The woods are gay where I never pass,
Nothing but shadows are where my thought
Plunges its feet in the moist dead grass.

Nothing save shadows and day elsewhere
Waiting for those that await and hope.
A horror lays its wind on my hair,
And a cold hand does for my cold hand grope.

Yet nothing in me save pain merits this,
Nothing in me save this merits pain.
Oh, Mother of Shadows, whose ice-dead kiss
Is madness, hasten towards my brain!

Todas as horas faço gaffes de civilidade e etiqueta
(A vida social é complexa para a minha fraqueza de nervos)
Mas nunca existiu quem só tivesse vivido em alma
Numa eterna luta de Janus.

Arre, a humanidade é uma coisa muito complexa...
Tenho-a observado com os olhos e os
nervos, e ainda não percebi.
(Compreender é um navio ao longe)

Toda a gente que tenho conhecido

Estou farto de semi-deuses!
Onde é que há gente no mundo?

Não tenho um amigo, um conhecido, em quem batessem
Ninguém que eu conheça perdeu o amor de uma mulher.
Tenho feito muitas coisas más, muitas coisas reles, muitas infâmias.
Tenho sido cobarde, revoltante, sujo.
Não encontro ninguém assim.
Todos têm sido príncipes, os que têm andado comigo