18 - SUMMER MOMENTS
SUMMER MOMENTS
I
The sky is blue,
The glad grass green.
My sad eyes woo
The alien scene.
Oh, could my heart
Partake of it
And feel no smart
Feeling life flit!
I have no home,
No hours save pain.
Sweet breezes, come
Into my brain!
Great river so
Quiet and true,
Teach me to go
Through life like you!
I have no rest.
My flowers have faded.
What was that quest
My will evaded?
Even what I wish
I care not for.
My heart is rich
And my love poor.
Oh, golden day,
Come into me
And my soul ray
With sunlit glee!
Let me be merely
A window‑pane
You pass through, clearly
A warmed no‑pain.
I faint and shiver
Hearing life come.
O passing river,
Where is my home?
O happy hours
That the fields wear,
Fresh summer showers!
O my despair!
O glad horizons!
O happy hills!
What pain imprisons
My struggling wills?
What is between
Myself and me?
What should have been
Lest this should be?
My life no more
Ever to be
Than a lone shore
Struck by the sea!
What fate, what power
Of dark despair
Makes each fair hour
Taste as not fair?
Oh, for some rest!
Give me a home,
A hope, a nest
Not to stray from!
Somewhere in life
Sure there must be
Something not strife
Waiting for me.
Lead me to it,
O happy day!
Make my heart fit
Thy going away!
Wake me the hopes
At least, though false,
My spirit gropes
Round prison‑walls.
Low voice of streams,
Sweet summer's wife -
Why made I dreams
My only life?
II
The sun shines.
Birds pass.
The path lines
The grass.
I go through
The meads,
Far from woe
And deeds.
There is no hope
Now here,
Nothing to grope
For or fear.
Nothing: the sky
And the green earth;
A vague wonder why
There was birth.
This and no more,
This and my soul
And the sky o'er
This nothing's all.
I am again
The child I was,
Having no pain
More than the grass.
I live a life
Freed from the morrow
And forget strife
And sorrow.
What were the shapes
Of fear and hope?
Vines show their grapes
Down the hill‑slope.
This real hour
Shall not survive,
Yet shall't endure
Because I live.
So let the glades
And the sky's blue
In vague soul‑shades
My heart come through,
Till I become
An outward thing,
Having no home;
A breath, a wing,
A portionless
Part of the hour,
Outside the stress
Of being more.
Low voices coming
Out of the day,
Chirping and humming
Near and away,
Make me a part
Of what you are,
Spill out my heart,
Shake it afar!
Let my soul be
A dust thrown up
To the winds' glee,
In the sea's cup!
There lost and mixed,
There selfless made,
No longer fixed
And casting shade.
This hour must pass
Like all I know;
Yet, while it was,
Fresh was my brow,
My eyelids drooped
With final ease,
I was not cooped
In thought's disease.
So let me rest
This while and deem
That life the best
That's most like dream.
This hot hour is
Of that vague size,
For I see this
Through no clear eyes,
But in a dim
Abandonment
Live in the rim
Of my thought's bent,
And this thought now's
A blade of grass
That not even knows
Hours pass.
III
A gentle wind hath risen
Out of the heated day.
May my soul be forgiven
Its dreams! O let me pray
That this freshening hour
May cling to memory
And have years after power
To live again in me!
'Tis very little, I know,
But it is happiness,
And the hours are but few
That we can really bless.
They are hours like this, freed
From belonging to thought,
When we have nought to heed
Save a breeze that is nought.
Let me therefore breathe in
Into my memory
This hour, and may it begin
Again whenever I see
My heart grow heavy and hot,
My thoughts grow close and late
O soft breeze, fan my thought!
O calmness, brush my fate!
«The Mad Fiddler». in Poesia Inglesa. Fernando Pessoa. (Organização e tradução de Luísa Freire. Prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes.) Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1995.
- 354.1ª publ. in O Louco Rabequista. Fernando Pessoa. (Organização e tradução de José Blanc de Portugal.) Lisboa: Presença, 1988.