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The Project Gutenberg EBook of 35 Sonnets by Fernando Pessoa
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Title: 35 Sonnets
Author: Fernando Pessoa
Release Date: November 30, 2006 [Ebook #19978]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35 SONNETS***
35 Sonnets
by Fernando Pessoa
Edition 1, (November 30, 2006)
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.
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