Page:35 Sonnets by Fernando Pessoa.djvu/11



When I should be asleep to mine own voice In telling thee how much thy love's my dream, I find me listening to myself, the noise Of my words othered in my hearing them. Yet wonder not: this is the poet's soul. I could not tell thee well of how I love, Loved I not less by knowing it, were all My self my love and no thought love to prove. What consciousness makes more by consciousness, It makes less, for it makes it less itself, My sense of love could not my love rich-dress Did it not for it spend love's own love-pelf. Poet's love's this (as in these words I prove thee): I love my love for thee more than I love thee.

We are born at sunset and we die ere morn, And the whole darkness of the world we know, How can we guess its truth, to darkness born, The obscure consequence of absent glow? Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray, And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask, Yet they speak not the features of the day. Why should these small denials of the whole More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract? Why what it calls "worth" does the captive soul Add to the small and from the large detract? So, put of light's love wishing it night's stretch, A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.