When I have sense of what to sense appears,
Sense is sense ere 'tis 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 day with all,
And I unsunned 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,
Like messengers that mock the message' mien,
Explaining all but the explanation:
     As if a chipered letter's hit
     And find it in an unknown language writ.

in «English Poetry (I)», by Fernando Pessoa, Ed. Assírio & Alvim

We pass and dream. Earth smiles. Virtue is rare.
Age, duty, gods weigh on our conscious bliss.
Hope for the best and for the worst prepare.
The sum of purposed wisdom speaks in this. 

in «English Poems by Fernando Pessoa», 
Edições Ática

Me, Chloe, a maid, the mighty fates have given,
Who was nought to them, to the peopled shades.
Thus the gods will. My years were but twice seven.
I am forgotten in my distant glades.

in «English Poems by Fernando Pessoa», Edições Ática

From my villa on the hill I long looked down
Upon the muttering town;
Then one day drew (life sight-sick, dull hope shed)
My toga o'er my head
(The simplest gesture being the greatest thing)
Like a raised wing.

in «English Poems by Fernando Pessoa», 
Edições Ática

 Claude Theberge, Les Tulips Blanches

I am so full of feelings
I can easily believe
I must be sentimental.
But when I mull this over,
I see it's all in thought,
I felt nothing whatever.

All of us alive spend
One life living it,
Another, thinking it,
And the only life we have
Is split between
The true one and the false.

But which is true
And which is false
No one can explain.
And as we go on living,
The life we spend's the one
That's doomed to thinking.

    (1933)

in «Poems of Fernando Pessoa»

F. Pessoa Work index►