Fernando Pessoa

Portugal
13 Jun 1888 // 30 Nov 1935
Poet

How Yesterday is Long Ago!

How yesterday is long ago! The past
Is a fixed infinite distance from to-day,
And bygone things, the first-lived as the last,
In irreparable sameness far away.
How the to-be is infinitely ever
Out of the place wherein it will be Now,
Like the seen wave yet far up in the river,
Which reaches not us, but the new-waved flow!
This thing Time is, whose being is having none,
The equable tyrant of our different fates,
Who could not be bought off by a shattered sun
Or tricked by new use of our careful dates.
This thing Time is, that to the grave will bear
My heart, sure but of it and of my fear.

Fernando Pessoa, in 'English Poetry - 35 sonnets'
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
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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."
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