{
 "id": "fernando-pessoa/viii",
 "title": "VIII",
 "poet": "Fernando Pessoa",
 "poet_slug": "fernando-pessoa",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "35 Sonnets",
 "book_slug": "35-sonnets",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "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,
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  "longest_line_chars": 52,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "How many masks wear we, and undermasks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon our countenance of soul, and when,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The true mask feels no inside to the mask",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever consciousness begins the task",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The task’s accepted use to sleepness ties.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a child frighted by its mirrored faces,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our souls, that children are, being thought-losing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Foist otherness upon their seen grimaces",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And get a whole world on their forgot causing;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, when a thought would unmask our soul’s masking,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "Itself goes not unmasked to the unmasking.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}