Fernando Pessoa was Portugal’s most unlikely poet. He was a quiet man who wrote under many names, and produced some of the most powerful and thought-provoking poems of the 20th century. One of his final and few works published in his lifetime was the Messagem, a complex look at the conflict between the past and future of Portugal. In the poem Infante (The Prince), he examines the legacy of Portugal’s golden age of exploration.
God wills, man dreams, and the work begins.
God willed that the earth be one,
That the oceans unite, and never again be separated.
That the white border that went from an island to continent
Now clear, running, until the end of the earth,
Then we saw the earth, suddenly, whole
Rising, round, from the proud blue.