First linesFernando Pessoa

  1. As a bad orator, badly o’er-book-skilled, VI
  2. As the lone, frighted user of a night-road XII
  3. As to a child, I talked my heart asleep X
  4. Beauty and love let no one separate, XIX
  5. Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day, XXIII
  6. Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad. XXXV
  7. Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind⁠— XXXIV
  8. He that goes back does, since he goes, advance, XXXIII
  9. How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action, V
  10. How many masks wear we, and undermasks, VIII
  11. How yesterday is long ago! The past XXVII
  12. I am older than Nature and her Time XXXI
  13. I could not think of thee as piecèd rot, IV
  14. I do not know what truth the false untruth XXX
  15. If that apparent part of life’s delight II
  16. Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night, XVIII
  17. Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling XV
  18. Like to a ship that storms urge on its course, XI
  19. My love, and not I, is the egoist. XVII
  20. My soul is a stiff pageant, man by man, XXII
  21. My weary life, that lives unsatisfied XXIX
  22. Oh to be idle loving idleness! IX
  23. Set ope all shutters, that the day come in Epithalamium
  24. Something in me was born before the stars XXIV
  25. The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss XXVIII
  26. The rain outside was cold in Hadrian’s soul. Antinous
  27. The world is woven all of dream and error XXVI
  28. Thought was born blind, but Thought knows what is seeing. XXI
  29. Thy words are torture to me, that scarce grieve thee⁠— VII
  30. We are born at sunset and we die ere morn, XIV
  31. We are in Fate and Fate’s and do but lack XXV
  32. We never joy enjoy to that full point XVI
  33. We pass and dream. Earth smiles. Virtue is rare. Inscriptions
  34. When I do think my meanest line shall be III
  35. When I have sense of what to sense appears, XXXII
  36. When I should be asleep to mine own voice XIII
  37. When in the widening circle of rebirth XX
  38. Whether we write or speak or do but look I

All poets.