Explore "As a Bad Orator" by Fernando Pessoa on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,
Doth overflow his purpose with made heat, / And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed / What should have been an inner instinct's feat; / Or as a prose-wit, harshly poet turned, / Lacking the subtler music in his measure, / With useless care labours but to be spurned, / Courting in alien speech the Muse's pleasure; / I study how to love or how to hate, / Estranged by consciousness from sentiment, / With a thought feeling forced to be sedate / Even when the feeling's nature is violent; / As who would learn to swim without the river, / When nearest to the trick, as far as ever.