# Thought — Poetry character guide

> Thought in Poetry by Fernando Pessoa.

**Role:** minor

**Also known as:** its, Its

**First appearance:** 0000-35-sonnets

## Who they are

Personified Thought, a recurring abstract entity in the poems.

## In the story

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/i)

Thought is personified as an entity that attempts but fails to convey the soul.

### [II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/ii)

Thought is personified as attempting to make sense of life, but ultimately finding nothing.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/iii)

The speaker's conjectures and ideas about future readers and the nature of existence drive his existential crisis.

### [V](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/v)

Thought is personified as something the speaker struggles to direct toward action.

### [VII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/vii)

Thought is personified as something that may be nulled by death, and later as 'idle thought' that may dismay less idle thoughts.

### [VIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/viii)

Thought is personified as an agent that attempts to unmask the soul but itself remains masked.

### [Chapter X](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/x)

The heart is personified as a child-like entity that is lulled to sleep by the speaker's words, indifferent to their literal meaning.

### [XII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xii)

The speaker's own thought, which turns upon the world in search of meaning.

### [XIV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xiv)

Personified as the faculty that grasps the scattered smallnesses of stars and strays in contemplation.

### [XV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xv)

The speaker's own thought of others' thought of him, which shapes his daily experience.

### [XVI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xvi)

Personified as an entity that, through reflection, undermines the solid reality of joy.

### [Chapter XVII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xvii)

Personified as a faculty that can bear the fruit of doubt and question reality.

### [Chapter XVIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xviii)

Thought is described as a high-walled maze, troubling the owner with lost strings and forgotten plans.

### [Chapter XX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xx)

Referenced as 'Thought' from which vague memories emerge like 'unseen bulks of vagueness'.

### [Chapter XXI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxi)

Personified as blind yet capable of understanding sight and reality beyond physical touch.

### [XXII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxii)

The faculty of memory and introspection that fails to grasp the soul's meaning.

### [Chapter XXIV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxiv)

The speaker's Thought is the medium through which this primordial past is dragged.

### [Chapter XXVI: The Limits of Knowledge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxvi)

Personified as a force that clouds life's day-sense with strangeness and yields only the sense of words, not true knowledge.

### [Chapter XXIX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxix)

Mentioned as having its 'active inaction' dulled by the monotony of existence.

### [XXXI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxxi)

Implicitly present as 'Consciousness' and the 'daylight thoughts' through which yearnings escape.

### [XXXII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxxii)

Thoughts are personified as messengers that come to explain but vanish, leaving the explanation itself unexplained.

### [XXXIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xxxiii)

Personified as the faculty that confers being on nothing and finds truth through negation.

### [Antinous](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/antinous)

Implied in Hadrian's mental processes and the 'thought' that Antinous is already a god.

### [XIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/xiii)

The 'thought whole' is described as having no meaning, lying spilt by Time's wall.

### [Epithalamium](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/epithalamium)

Personified as an entity that 'shrink[s]' and 'mar[s]' hopes, and later as 'thought's self' that frets and troubles after repeated coupling.

### [II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/chapters/ii)

The bride's own thoughts shrink and become unready as she anticipates the bridegroom's hands.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/characters/thought
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_6_se/characters