Miguel de Unamuno: "Throw Yourself Like Seed"

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 there, 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.

"Throw Yourself Like Seed" by Miguel de Unamuno, from The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade. Translated from the original Spanish by Robert Bly. © Harper Perennial, 1993.

Art credit: "Matthew 13: The Sower," oil painting by Chris Higham (originally color).