Sonnet XIII.

When I should be asleep to mine own voice
In telling thee how much thy love's my dream,
I find me listening to myself, the noise
Of my words othered in my hearing them.
Yet wonder not: this is the poet's soul.
I could not tell thee well of how I love,
Loved I not less by knowing it, were all
My self my love and no thought love to prove.
What consciousness makes more by consciousness,
It makes less, for it makes it less itself,
My sense of love could not my love rich-dress
Did it not for it spend love's own love-pelf.
    Poet's love's this (as in these words I prove thee):
    I love my love for thee more than I love thee.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, he was a prolific writer, famed for his heteronyms—alternative personas with distinct biographies and writing styles. Pessoa's poetry and prose made substantial contributions to Portuguese literature. He died in 1935, leaving behind a considerable body of work that continues to be analyzed and celebrated.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet IV.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XXXV.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet II.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet I.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

English

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Sonnet XVII.

My love, and not I, is the egoist.
My love for thee loves itself more than thee;
Ay, more than me, in whom it doth exist,
And makes me live that it may feed on me.
In the country of bridges the bridge is
More real than the shores it doth unsever;
So in our world, all of Relation, this
Is true--that truer is Love than either lover.
This thought therefore comes lightly to Doubt's door--
If we, seeing substance of this world, are not
Mere Intervals, God's Absence and no more,
Hollows in real Consciousness and Thought.
    And if 'tis possible to Thought to bear this fruit,
    Why should it not be possible to Truth?

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet X.

As to a child, I talked my heart asleep
With empty promise of the coming day,
And it slept rather for my words made sleep
Than from a thought of what their sense did say.
For did it care for sense, would it not wake
And question closer to the morrow's pleasure?
Would it not edge nearer my words, to take
The promise in the meting of its measure?
So, if it slept, 'twas that it cared but for
The present sleepy use of promised joy,
Thanking the fruit but for the forecome flower
Which the less active senses best enjoy.
    Thus with deceit do I detain the heart
    Of which deceit's self knows itself a part.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet I.

Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
    We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
    And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet XV.

Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling
From the mixed sense of being not loved and loving,
Who with feared longing half would know, dissembling
With what he'd wish proved what he fears soon proving,
I look with inner eyes afraid to look,
Yet perplexed into looking, at the worth
This verse may have and wonder, of my book,
To what thoughts shall't in alien hearts give birth.
But, as he who doth love, and, loving, hopes,
Yet, hoping, fears, fears to put proof to proof,
And in his mind for possible proofs gropes,
Delaying the true proof, lest the real thing scoff,
    I daily live, i'th' fame I dream to see,
    But by my thought of others' thought of me.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet XXXII.

When I have sense of what to sense appears,
Sense is sense ere 'tis mine or mine in me is.
When I hear, Hearing, ere I do hear, hears.
When I see, before me abstract Seeing sees.
I am part Soul part I in all I touch--
Soul by that part I hold in common with all,
And I the spoiled part, that doth make sense such
As I can err by it and my sense mine call.
The rest is wondering what these thoughts may mean,
That come to explain and suddenly are gone,
Like messengers that mock the message' mien,
Explaining all but the explanation;
    As if we a ciphered letter's cipher hit
    And find it in an unknown language writ.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet VI.

As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,
Doth overflow his purpose with made heat,
And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed
What should have been an inner instinct's feat;
Or as a prose-wit, harshly poet turned,
Lacking the subtler music in his measure,
With useless care labours but to be spurned,
Courting in alien speech the Muse's pleasure;
I study how to love or how to hate,
Estranged by consciousness from sentiment,
With a thought feeling forced to be sedate
Even when the feeling's nature is violent;
    As who would learn to swim without the river,
    When nearest to the trick, as far as ever.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa