{
 "id": "fernando-pessoa/vi",
 "title": "VI",
 "poet": "Fernando Pessoa",
 "poet_slug": "fernando-pessoa",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "35 Sonnets",
 "book_slug": "35-sonnets",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 6,
 "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": "As a bad orator, badly o’er-book-skilled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth overflow his purpose with made heat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What should have been an inner instinct’s feat;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or as a prose-wit, harshly poet turned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lacking the subtler music in his measure,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With useless care labours but to be spurned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Courting in alien speech the Muse’s pleasure;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I study how to love or how to hate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Estranged by consciousness from sentiment,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a thought feeling forced to be sedate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even when the feeling’s nature is violent;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As who would learn to swim without the river,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "When nearest to the trick, as far as ever.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}