Fernando Pessoa

I am older than Nature and her Time
By all the timeless age of Consciousness
And my adult oblivion of the clime
Where I was born makes me not countryless.
An exile's yearnings through my thoughts escape
For daylight of that land where once I dreamed,
Which I cannot recall in colour or shape
But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed
And yet is not as light rememberèd,
Nor to the left or to the right conceived ;
And all round me tastes as if life were dead
And the world made but to be disbelieved.
Thus I my hope on unknown truth lay ; yet
How but by hope do I the unknown truth get ?
(35 sonnets)