> [!cite]- Metadata > 2026-01-29 01:10 > Status: #primary #poetry > Tags: `Read Time: 1m 45` > **Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa** (13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator. Pessoa was a prolific writer both in his own name and approximately seventy-five other names, of which three stand out: [Alberto Caeiro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Caeiro "Alberto Caeiro"), [Álvaro de Campos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvaro_de_Campos "Álvaro de Campos"), and [Bernardo Soares](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Soares). He did not define these as _pseudonyms_ because he felt that this did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them _heteronyms_, a term he invented. These imaginary figures sometimes held unpopular or extreme views. --- ### Autopsychography The poet is a man who feigns And feigns so thoroughly, at last He manages to feign as pain The pain he really feels, And those who read what once he wrote Feel clearly, in the pain they read, Neither of the pains he felt, Only a pain they cannot sense. And thus, around its jolting track There runs, to keep our reason busy, The circling clockwork train of ours That men agree to call a heart. --- ### The Herdsman I'm herdsman of a flock. The sheep are my thoughts And my thoughts are all sensations. I think with my eyes and my ears And my hands and feet And nostrils and mouth. To think a flower is to see and smell it. To eat a fruit is to sense its savor. And that is why, when I feel sad, In a day of heat, because of so much joy And lay me down in the grass to rest And close my sun-warmed eyes, I feel my whole body relaxed in reality And know the whole truth and am happy. --- ### Odes 1. Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love Most of all those fugitive roses That on the day they are born, That very day, must also die. Eternal, for them, the light of day: They're born when the sun is already high And die before Apollo's course - Across the visible sky is run. We too, of our lives, must make one day: We never know, my Lydia, nor want To know of nights before or after The little while that we may last. 2. To be great, be whole: nothing that's you Should you exaggerate or exclude. In each thing, be all. Give all you are In the least you ever do. The whole moon, because it rides so high, Is reflected in each pool. --- ### **References** [Fernando Pessoa | The Poetry Foundation](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fernando-pessoa#tab-poems) [Autopsychography](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/26780/autopsychography) [The Herdsman](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/26785/the-herdsman) [Odes](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/26781/odes)