Page:35 Sonnets by Fernando Pessoa.djvu/16



Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day, When clouds are one cloud till the horizon, Our thinking senses deem the sun away And say "'tis sunless" and "there is no sun"; And yet the very day they wrong truth by Is of the unseen sun's effluent essence, The very words do give themselves the lie, The very thought of absence comes from presence: Even so deem we through Good of what is evil. He speaks of light that speaks of absent light, And absent god, becoming present devil, Is still the absent god by essence' right. The withdrawn cause by being withdrawn doth get (Being thereby cause still) the denied effect.

Something in me was born before the stars And saw the sun begin from far away. Our yellow, local day on its wont jars, For it hath communed with an absolute day. Through my Thought's night, as a worn robe's heard trail That I have never seen, I drag this past That saw the Possible like a dawn grow pale On the lost night before it, mute and vast. It dates remoter than God's birth can reach, That had no birth but the world's coming after. So the world's to me as, after whispered speech, The cause-ignored sudden echoing of laughter. That 't has a meaning my conjecture knows, But that 't has meaning's all its meaning shows.