{
 "id": "fernando-pessoa/ix",
 "title": "IX",
 "poet": "Fernando Pessoa",
 "poet_slug": "fernando-pessoa",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "35 Sonnets",
 "book_slug": "35-sonnets",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 9,
 "container": "35 Sonnets",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1918,
  "venue": "35 Sonnets (1918)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/sonnets00pess",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19978"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/fernando-pessoa_poetry",
  "file": "thirty-five-sonnets.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19978",
   "https://archive.org/details/sonnets00pess",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66039",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66040",
   "https://permalinkbnd.bnportugal.gov.pt/records/item/91830-english-poems",
   "http://arquivopessoa.net/textos/1750",
   "https://archive.org/details/p1athenaeum1920lond",
   "http://arquivopessoa.net/textos/1761",
   "https://hemerotecadigital.cm-lisboa.pt/OBRAS/CONTEMPORANEA/1923/N9/N9_item1"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh to be idle loving idleness!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I am idle all in hate of me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ever in action’s dream, in the false stress",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of purposed action never set to be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My will to act binds with excess my action,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not-acting coils the thought with raged despair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And acting rage doth paint despair distraction.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like someone sinking in a treacherous sand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each gesture to deliver sinks the more;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The struggle avails not, and to raise no hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though but more slowly useless, we’ve no power.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hence live I the dead life each day doth bring,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Repurposed for next day’s repurposing.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}