{
 "id": "fernando-pessoa/xiv",
 "title": "XIV",
 "poet": "Fernando Pessoa",
 "poet_slug": "fernando-pessoa",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "35 Sonnets",
 "book_slug": "35-sonnets",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 14,
 "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": 58,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the whole darkness of the world we know,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The obscure consequence of absent glow?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, though their eyes look through night’s complete mask,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet they speak not the features of the day.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why should these small denials of the whole",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why what it calls “worth” does the captive soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Add to the small and from the large detract?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, out of light’s love wishing it night’s stretch,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}