The article analyses the theme of the poet and poetry in the lyrics of a Portuguese writer Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (1919–2004). The article examines the poems written in different years and the author’s essays titled “The Art of Poetry” (“Arte Poética”). The analysis shows that Sophia de Mello understands poetry not as an art of words, but as an art of being. For the author, poetry is inseparable from the reality and, being similar to an element of the nature, it includes both the chaos and the harmony. The poetry is the source of a special knowledge. It permits better understanding of the natural and the social reality and gives an opportunity to see the beauty of the world and to pay attention to injustice, against which the poet should stand. That’s why the author raises social problems in her lyrics, especially in the poems written in the period of Salazar dictatorship. From the point of view of Sophia de Mello the real poet always seeks for the justice and the truth so the aesthetics cannot be separated from ethics.