Sonnet XVI.

We never joy enjoy to that full point
Regret doth wish joy had enjoyèd been,
Nor have the strength regret to disappoint
Recalling not past joy's thought, but its mien.
Yet joy was joy when it enjoyèd was
And after-enjoyed when as joy recalled,
It must have been joy ere its joy did pass
And, recalled, joy still, since its being-past galled.
Alas! All this is useless, for joy's in
Enjoying, not in thinking of enjoying.
Its mere thought-mirroring gainst itself doth sin,
By mere reflecting solid life destroying,
    Yet the more thought we take to thought to prove
    It must not think, doth further from joy move.

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 VIII.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XXII.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XXI.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XX.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

English

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Sonnet II.

If that apparent part of life's delight
Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen
By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,
Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.
Haply Truth's body is no eyable being,
Appearance even as appearance lies,
Haply our close, dark, vague, warm sense of seeing
Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.
Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.
All is either the irrational world we see
Or some aught-else whose being-unknown doth rot
Its use for our thought's use. Whence taketh me
    A qualm-like ache of life, a body-deep
    Soul-hate of what we seek and what we weep.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet XXIX.

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 poisèd 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.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet XX.

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!

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet XXX.

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, not 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.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet V.

How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,
When the miserly press of each day's need
Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction
My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed?
How can I pause my thoughts upon the task
My soul was born to think that it must do
When every moment has a thought to ask
To fit the immediate craving of its cue?
The coin I'd heap for marrying my Muse
And build our home i'th' greater Time-to-be
Becomes dissolved by needs of each day's use
And I feel beggared of infinity,
    Like a true-Christian sinner, each day flesh-driven
    By his own act to forfeit his wished heaven.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet VII.

Thy words are torture to me, that scarce grieve thee--
That entire death shall null my entire thought;
And I feel torture, not that I believe thee,
But that I cannot disbelieve thee not.
Shall that of me that now contains the stars
Be by the very contained stars survived?
Thus were Fate all unjust. Yet what truth bars
An all unjust Fate's truth from being believed?
Conjecture cannot fit to the seen world
A garment of its thought untorn or covering,
Or with its stuffed garb forge an otherworld
Without itself its dead deceit discovering;
    So, all being possible, an idle thought may
    Less idle thoughts, self-known no truer, dismay.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa