Fernando Pessoa

Portugal
13 Jun 1888 // 30 Nov 1935
Poet

Beauty and Love Let no one Separate

Beauty and love let no one separate,
Whom exact Nature did to each ocher fit,
Giving to Beauty love as finishing fate
And to Love beauty as true colour of it.
Let he but friend be who the soul finds fair,
But let none love outside the body's thought,
So the seen couple's togetherness shall bear
Truth to the beauty each in the other sought.
I could but love thee out of mockery
Of love and thee and mine own ugliness;
Therefore thy beauty I sing and wish not thee,
Thanking the Gods I long not out of place
Lest, like a slave that for kings' robes doth long,
Obtained, shall with mere wearing do them wrong.

Fernando Pessoa, in 'English Poetry - 35 sonnets'
Search

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays