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             English 
              version 
            An introduction 
              to the poem: The 
              set of three poems, called "The warnings", begins with 
              a poem dedicated to Bandarra, the XVI century shoemaker turned prophet 
              whom interpreters credit with foretelling accurately the coming 
              of a period when Portugal was under Spanish rule, the subsequent 
              1640 revolution and liberation under king John IV. The same Bandarra 
              is said (by a miracle of interpretation) to have foretold a future 
              supremacy of Portugal among nations. The 
              second poem is dedicated to father Antonio Vieira who was the true 
              theoreticist of the Fifth Empire to which Portugal (and the world) 
              would be lead by a great king. Finally, the third poem does not 
              have a name (the only nameless poem in Mensagem) because 
              the third prophet, the man who voices the third warning, is Fernando 
              Pessoa himself! He says he is waiting for the King, which 
              tradition says will come in a misty morning, and he is despairing 
              of witnessing his advent in his own time...  
            Third Warning 
               
            I 
              write my book at the brink of despair. 
             
              My heart has nothing to hold. 
             
              I have my eyes warm with water. 
             
              Only you, Lord, give me a reason to live for. 
              
             
              Only the feeling and thinking of you 
             
              Fills and gilds my empty days. 
             
              But when will you want to return? 
             
              When is the King? When the Hour? 
              
             
              When will you come to be the Christ 
             
              Of one on whom the false God died, 
             
              And to awaken, from the evil of today, 
            The 
              New Earth and the New Skies? 
              
             
              When will you come, oh Hidden One, 
             
              Dreamed by Portuguese of all eras, 
             
              To turn me into more than the uncertain breath 
             
              Of a great yearning that God inspired? 
              
             
              Ah, when will you wish, by returning, 
             
              Turn my hope into love? 
             
              From the mist and the yearning, when? 
            
               When, my 
                Dream and my Lord?  
             
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