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

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 I.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XXX.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XIV.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Simple Poetry

Sonnet XXXII.

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 XXXI.

I am older than Nature and her Time
By all the timeless age of Consciousness,
And my adult oblivion of the clime
Where I was born makes me not countryless.
Ay, and dim through my daylight thoughts escape
Yearnings for that land where my childhood dreamed,
Which I cannot recall in colour or shape
But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed
And yet is not as light remembered,
Nor to the left or to the right conceived;
And all round me tastes as if life were dead
And the world made but to be disbelieved.
    Thus I my hope on unknown truth lay; yet
    How but by hope do I the unknown truth get?

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet XXVIII.

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.

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Sonnet IX.

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 set 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.

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 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