Explore "Happy the Maimed" by Fernando Pessoa on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.