Ten Poems to Set You Free

Chapter One

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.



RECOVER YOUR SPIRIT

When the fascist General Milan-Astray stormed into the University of Salamanca to confront the elderly professor and poet-philosopher Miguel de Unamuno over his criticism of Franco and the fascist cause, Unamuno said to him:

At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute forc ... read full excerpt from: Ten Poems to Set You Free ebook