{
 "id": "fernando-pessoa/xxii",
 "title": "XXII",
 "poet": "Fernando Pessoa",
 "poet_slug": "fernando-pessoa",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "35 Sonnets",
 "book_slug": "35-sonnets",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 22,
 "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": 51,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "My soul is a stiff pageant, man by man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of some Egyptian art than Egypt older,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Found in some tomb whose rite no guess can scan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where all things else to coloured dust did moulder.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whate’er its sense may mean, its age is twin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To that of priesthoods whose feet stood near God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When knowledge was so great that ’twas a sin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And man’s mere soul too man for its abode.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when I ask what means that pageant I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And would look at it suddenly, I lose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sense I had of seeing it, nor can try",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Again to look, nor hath my memory a use",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That seems recalling, save that it recalls",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "An emptiness of having seen those walls.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ]
 ]
}