Tags
"Ten poems to set you free", abundance, enlightenment, fate, field, Miguel de Unamuno, philosophy, poetry, Roger Housden, sadness, seed, spirit
On days when things weigh me down, I like to read this poem. I find it uplifting.
THROW YOURSELF LIKE SEED
by Miguel de Unamuno
Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit; sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate that brushes your heel as it turns going by, the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.
Now you are only giving food to that final pain which is slowly winding you in the nets of death, but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts is the work; start then, turn to the work.
Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field, don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death, and do not let the past weigh down your motion.
Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself, for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds; from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.
o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o
“Unamuno’s name is remembered in Spain, even today, as a symbol of courage and integrity. In saying that to live is to work, Unamuno even infers that a life without work is itself a kind of living death. But the work that is truly yours is the life that is truly yours; and if we have created something from our labors, it will speak for us long after we are gone.”¹
¹Roger Housden – “ten poems to set you free”
