Carlos Paes Padrão dos Descobrimentos (detail)

Possessio Maris

God will, Man dreams, the work is born.
God willed that all the earth be one,
That seas unite and never separate.
You he blessed, and you went forth to read the foam.

And the white shore lit up, isle to continent,
And flowed, even to the world's end,
and suddenly the earth was seen complete,
Upsurging, round, from blue profundity.
Who blessed you made you portuguese.
Us he gave a sign: the sea's and our part in you.
The Sea fulfilled, the Empire fell apart.
But ah, Portugal must yet fulfill itself!

from «Mensagem - Second Part: Portuguese Sea»

 O sea of salt, how much of all your salt
Contains the tears of Portugal?
So we might sail, how many mothers wept,
How many sons have prayed in vain!
How many girls betrothed reamined unwed
That we might posses you, Sea!

Was it worth the effort? Anything 's worth it
if the soul's not petty.
If you'd sail beyond the cape
Sail you must past cares, past grief.
God gave perils to the sea and sheer depth,
But mirrored heaven there.

from «Mensagem - Second Part: Portuguese Sea»

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.

(1918)

in «35 Sonnets», Edições Atica

Lightly, listlessly, my thoughts
of sorrow float like algae
In the wind's sleep -
Slack stands of hair
Of the water's dead body.

Like dead leaves they float
Along the standing waters -
Things dressed in nothing
After whirling at the doors
Of deserted houses.

Incurable sleep of being,
Vestige of what never was,
Slight pain, brief tedium,
I don't know if stops or flows,
if it aches or just is.

from «Fernando Pessoa Poems»

Ah, how delightful
Not to do one's duty,
Having a book to read
And not read it!
Reading's a bore,
Studying's worthless.
The sun gilds things
Without literature.

Willy nilly runs the rivers
Without an original edition.
And the breeze, this very one,
So natural, matutinal,
Since it has time, its in no hurry...

Books are papers daubed with ink.
Study's the thing where the distinction
Is unclear between nothing and nothing at all.

When there's fog, so much the better
To wait for King Sebastian's return -
Wheter he comes or not!

Poetry is grand, and goodness too, and dancing...
But best of all are children,
Flowers, music, moonlight, and the sun
That sins only when aborting and not bearing.

And more than all of this
Is Jesus Christ
Who knew nothing of finances
Nor even claimed he had a library...

(1935)

in «CANCIONEIRO» by Fernando Pessoa

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