Explore "Like to a Ship that Storms" by Fernando Pessoa on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Like to a ship that storms urge on its course,
By its own trials our soul is surer made.
The very things that make the voyage worse / Do make it better; its peril is its aid.
And, as the storm drives from the storm, our heart / Within the peril disimperilled grows; / A port is near the more from port we part --
The port whereto our driven direction goes.
If we reap knowledge to cross-profit, this / From storms we learn, when the storm's height doth drive --
That the black presence of its violence is / The pushing promise of near far blue skies.
Learn we but how to have the pilot-skill, / And the storm's very might shall mate our will.