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Home > Authors Index > Browse all available works of Fernando Pessoa > Text of Sonnet XXXIV [Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind]

A poem by Fernando Pessoa

Sonnet XXXIV [Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind]

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Title:     Sonnet XXXIV [Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind]
Author: Fernando Pessoa [More Titles by Pessoa]

Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind--
All who, stamped separate by curtailing birth,
Owe no duty’s allegiance to mankind
Nor stand a valuing in their scheme of worth!
But I, whom Fate, not Nature, did curtail,
By no exterior voidness being exempt,
Must bear accusing glances where I fail,
Fixed in the general orbit of contempt.
Fate, less than Nature in being kind to lacking,
Giving the ill, shows not as outer cause,
Making our mock-free will the mirror’s backing
Which Fate’s own acts as if in itself shows;
And men, like children, seeing the image there,
Take place for cause and make our will Fate bear.





[The end]
Fernando Pessoa's poem: Sonnet XXXIV

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