Chapter XIX: Appendix: A

Translations of Poems by Rizal

TO THE PHILIPPINE YOUTH

Hold high the brow serene,
O youth, where now you stand;
Let the bright sheen
Of your grace be seen,
Fair hope of my fatherland!

Come now, thou genius grand,
And bring down inspiration;
With thy mighty hand,
Swifter than the wind’s violation,
Raise the eager mind to higher station.

Come down with pleasing light
Of art and science to the fight,
O youth, and there untie
The chains that heavy lie,
Your spirit free to blight.

See how in flaming zone
Amid the shadows thrown,
The Spaniard’s holy hand
A crown’s resplendent band
Proffers to this Indian land.

Thou, who now wouldst rise
On wings of rich emprise,
Seeking from Olympian skies
Songs of sweetest strain,
Softer than ambrosial rain;

Thou, whose voice divine
Rivals Philomel’s refrain,
And with varied line
Through the night benign
Frees mortality from pain;

Thou, who by sharp strife
Wakest thy mind to life;
And the memory bright
Of thy genius’ light
Makest immortal in its strength;

And thou, in accents clear
Of Phœbus, to Apelles dear;
Or by the brush’s magic art
Takest from nature’s store a part,
To fix it on the simple canvas’ length;

Go forth, and then the sacred fire
Of thy genius to the laurel may aspire;
To spread around the fame,
And in victory acclaim,
Through wider spheres the human name.

Day, O happy day,
Fair Filipinas, for thy land!
So bless the Power to-day
That places in thy way
This favor and this fortune grand!

—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.

TO MY MUSE

Invoked no longer is the Muse,
The lyre is out of date;
The poets it no longer use,
And youth its inspiration now imbues
With other form and state.

If to-day our fancies aught
Of verse would still require,
Helicon’s hill remains unsought;
And without heed we but inquire,
Why the coffee is not brought.

In the place of thought sincere
That our hearts may feel,
We must seize a pen of steel,
And with verse and line severe
Fling abroad a jest and jeer.

Muse, that in the past inspired me,
And with songs of love hast fired me;
Go thou now to dull repose,
For to-day in sordid prose
I must earn the gold that hired me.

Now must I ponder deep,
Meditate, and struggle on;
E’en sometimes I must weep;
For he who love would keep
Great pain has undergone.

Fled are the days of ease,
The days of love’s delight;
When flowers still would please
And give to suffering souls surcease
From pain and sorrow’s blight.

One by one they have passed on,
All I loved and moved among;
Dead or married—from me gone,
For all I place my heart upon
By fate adverse are stung.

Go thou, too, O Muse, depart,
Other regions fairer find;
For my land but offers art
For the laurel, chains that bind,
For a temple, prisons blind.

But before thou leavest me, speak:
Tell me with thy voice sublime,
Thou couldst ever from me seek
A song of sorrow for the weak,
Defiance to the tyrant’s crime.

—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.

THE SONG OF THE TRAVELER

Like to a leaf that is fallen and withered,
Tossed by the tempest from pole unto pole;
Thus roams the pilgrim abroad without purpose,
Roams without love, without country or soul.

Following anxiously treacherous fortune,
Fortune which e’en as he grasps at it flees;
Vain though the hopes that his yearning is seeking,
Yet does the pilgrim embark on the seas!

Ever impelled by the invisible power,
Destined to roam from the East to the West;
Oft he remembers the faces of loved ones,
Dreams of the day when he, too, was at rest.

Chance may assign him a tomb on the desert,
Grant him a final asylum of peace;
Soon by the world and his country forgotten,
God rest his soul when his wanderings cease!

Often the sorrowing pilgrim is envied,
Circling the globe like a sea-gull above;
Little, ah, little they know what a void
Saddens his soul by the absence of love.

Home may the pilgrim return in the future,
Back to his loved ones his footsteps he bends;
Naught will he find but the snow and the ruins,
Ashes of love and the tomb of his friends,

Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Stranger thou art in the land of thy birth;
Others may sing of their love while rejoicing,
Thou once again must roam o’er the earth.

Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Dry are the tears that a while for thee ran;
Pilgrim, begone! And forget thine affliction,
Loud laughs the world at the sorrows of man.

—Translated by Arthur P. Ferguson.

SONNET: TO THE VIRGIN MARY

(Written in Manila, about the year 1880)

Dear Mary, soul of peace, our consolation,
That to the heavy-stricken heart doth bring
The cool sweet waters from the all-healing spring,
From that skied throne where since thy coronation
Our hearts are bowed in tender adoration,
Lean down to hear my grief’s vague whispering,
And o’er me, bruised and broken, deign to fling
The shining robe of thy serene salvation.
Thou art my mother, placid Mary; thou
Mine only hope, my one sure source of strength.
Wild is the sea and inky dark the night.
One beacon shines!—the star upon thy brow.
Sharp sin assails me; but thy look at length
Puts sin and grief and thoughts of death to flight!

—Translated by C. E. R.

MY RETREAT

By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove’s confine;
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.

Its roof the frail palm-leaf and its floor the cane,
Its beams and posts of the unhewn wood;
Little there is of value in this hut so plain,
And better by far in the lap of the mount to have lain,
By the song and the murmur of the high sea’s flood.

A purling brook from the woodland glade
Drops down o’er the stones and around it sweeps,
Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough cane’s aid;
That in the still night its murmur has made,
And in the day’s heat a crystal fountain leaps.

When the sky is serene how gently it flows,
And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays;
But when the rains fall a torrent it goes
Boiling and foaming through the rocky close.
Roaring unchecked to the sea’s wide ways.

The howl of the dog and the song of the bird,
And only the kalaw’s hoarse call resound;
Nor is the voice of vain man to be heard,
My mind to harness or my steps to begird;
The woodlands alone and the sea wrap me round.

The sea, ah, the sea! for me it is all,
As it massively sweeps from the worlds apart;
Its smile in the morn to my soul is a call,
And when in the even my faith seems to pall,
It breathes with its sadness an echo to my heart.

By night an arcanum; when translucent it glows,
All spangled over with its millions of lights,
And the bright sky above resplendent shows;
While the waves with their sighs tell of their woes—
Tales that are lost as they roll to the heights.

They tell of the world when the first dawn broke,
And the sunlight over their surface played;
When thousands of beings from nothingness woke,
To people the depths and the heights to cloak,
Wherever its life-giving kiss was laid.

But when in the night the wild waves awake,
And the waves in their fury begin to leap,
Through the air rush the cries that my mind shake;
Voices that pray, songs and moans that partake
Of laments from the souls sunk down in the deep.

Then from their heights the mountains groan,
And the trees shiver tremulous from great unto least;
The groves rustle plaintive and the herds utter moan,
For they say that the ghosts of the folk that are gone
Are calling them down to their death’s merry feast.

In terror and confusion whispers the night,
While blue and green flames flit over the deep;
But calm reigns again with the morning’s light,
And soon the bold fisherman comes into sight,
As his bark rushes on and the waves sink to sleep.

So onward glide the days in my lonely abode;
Driven forth from the world where once I was known,
I muse o’er the fate upon me bestowed;
A fragment forgotten that the moss will corrode,
To hide from mankind the world in me shown.

I live in the thought of the lov’d ones left,
And oft their names to my mind are borne;
Some have forsaken me and some by death are reft;
But now ’tis all one, as through the past I drift,
That past that from me can never be torn.

For it is the friend that is with me always,
That ever in sorrow keeps the faith in my soul;
While through the still night it watches and prays,
As here in my exile in my lone hut it stays,
To strengthen my faith when doubts o’er me roll.

That faith I keep and I hope to see shine
The day when the Idea prevails over might;
When after the fray and death’s slow decline,
Some other voice sounds, far happier than mine,
To raise the glad song of the triumph of right.

I see the sky glow, refulgent and clear,
As when it forced on me my first dear illusion;
I feel the same wind kiss my forehead sere,
And the fire is the same that is burning here
To stir up youth’s blood in boiling confusion.

I breathe here the winds that perchance have pass’d
O’er the fields and the rivers of my own natal shore;
And mayhap they will bring on the returning blast
The sighs that lov’d being upon them has cast—
Messages sweet from the first love I bore.

To see the same moon, all silver’d as of yore,
I feel the sad thoughts within me arise;
The fond recollections of the troth we swore,
Of the field and the bower and the wide sea-shore,
The blushes of joy, with the silence and sighs.

A butterfly seeking the flowers and the light,
Of other lands dreaming, of vaster extent;
Scarce a youth, from home and love I took flight,
To wander unheeding, free from doubt or affright—
So in foreign lands were my brightest days spent.

I, when like a languishing bird I was fain
To the home of my fathers and my love to return,
Of a sudden the fierce tempest roar’d amain;
So I saw my wings shatter’d and no home remain,
My trust sold to others and wrecks round me burn.

Hurl’d out into exile from the land I adore,
My future all dark and no refuge to seek;
My roseate dreams hover round me once more,
Sole treasures of all that life to me bore;
The faiths of youth that with sincerity speak.

But not as of old, full of life and of grace,
Do you hold out hopes of undying reward;
Sadder I find you; on your lov’d face,
Though still sincere, the pale lines trace
The marks of the faith it is yours to guard.

You offer now, dreams, my gloom to appease,
And the years of my youth again to disclose;
So I thank you, O storm, and heaven-born breeze,
That you knew of the hour my wild flight to ease,
To cast me back down to the soil whence I rose.

By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in the pleasant grove’s confine,
I have found a home in its mantle of green,
In the shady woods, that peace and calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.

—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.

TO THE FLOWERS OF HEIDELBERG

Go to my native land, go, foreign flowers.
Sown by the traveler on his way;
And there, beneath its azure sky,
Where all of my affections lie;
There from the weary pilgrim say,
What faith is his in that land of ours!

Go there and tell how when the dawn,
Her early light diffusing,
Your petals first flung open wide;
His steps beside chill Neckar drawn,
You see him silent by your side,
Upon its Spring perennial musing.

Saw how when morning’s light,
All your fragrance stealing,
Whispers to you as in mirth
Playful songs of love’s delight,
He, too, murmurs his love’s feeling
In the tongue he learned at birth.

That when the sun on Koenigstuhl’s height
Pours out its golden flood,
And with its slowly warming light
Gives life to vale and grove and wood,
He greets that sun, here only upraising,
Which in his native land is at its zenith blazing.

And tell there of that day he stood,
Near to a ruin’d castle gray,
By Neckar’s banks, or shady wood,
And pluck’d you from beside the way;
Tell, too, the tale to you addressed,
And how with tender care,
Your bending leaves he press’d
’Twixt pages of some volume rare.

Bear then, O flowers, love’s message bear;
My love to all the lov’d ones there,
Peace to my country—fruitful land—
Faith whereon its sons may stand,
And virtue for its daughters’ care;
All those belovéd creatures greet,
That still around home’s altar meet.

And when you come unto its shore,
This kiss I now on you bestow,
Fling where the winged breezes blow;
That borne on them it may hover o’er
All that I love, esteem, and adore.

But though, O flowers, you come unto that land,
And still perchance your colors hold;
So far from this heroic strand,
Whose soil first bade your life unfold,
Still here your fragrance will expand;
Your soul that never quits the earth
Whose light smiled on you at your birth.

—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.

YOU ASK ME FOR VERSES

You bid me now to strike the lyre,
That mute and torn so long has lain:
And yet I cannot wake the strain,
Nor will the Muse one note inspire!
Coldly it shakes in accents dire,
As if my soul itself to wring,
And when its sound seems but to fling
A jest at its own low lament;
So in sad isolation pent,
My soul can neither feel nor sing.

There was a time—ah, ’tis too true—
But that time long ago has past—
When upon me the Muse had cast
Indulgent smile and friendship’s due;
But of that age now all too few
The thoughts that with me yet will stay;
As from the hours of festive play
There linger on mysterious notes,
And in our minds the memory floats
Of minstrelsy and music gay.

A plant I am, that scarcely grown,
Was torn from out its Eastern bed,
Where all around perfume is shed,
And life but as a dream is known;
The land that I can call my own,
By me forgotten ne’er to be,
Where trilling birds their song taught me,
And cascades with their ceaseless roar,
And all along the spreading shore
The murmurs of the sounding sea.

While yet in childhood’s happy day,
I learned upon its sun to smile,
And in my breast there seems the while
Seething volcanic fires to play.
A bard I was, my wish alway
To call upon the fleeting wind,
With all the force of verse and mind:
“Go forth, and spread around its flame,
From zone to zone with glad acclaim,
And earth to heaven together bind!”

But it I left, and now no more—
Like a tree that is broken and sere—
My natal gods bring the echo clear
Of songs that in past times they bore;
Wide seas I cross’d to foreign shore,
With hope of change and other fate;
My folly was made clear too late,
For in the place of good I sought
The seas reveal’d unto me naught,
But made death’s specter on me wait.

All these fond fancies that were mine,
All love, all feeling, all emprise,
Were left beneath the sunny skies,
Which o’er that flowery region shine;
So press no more that plea of thine,
For songs of love from out a heart
That coldly lies a thing apart;
Since now with tortur’d soul I haste
Unresting o’er the desert waste,
And lifeless gone is all the art.

—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.

MY LAST FAREWELL

Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress’d,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.

On the field of battle, ’mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;
The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily white,
Scaffold or open plain, combat or martyrdom’s plight,
’Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country’s need.

I die just when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;
And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,
Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray.

My dreams, when life first opened to me,
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Were to see thy lov’d face, O gem of the Orient sea,
From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;
No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye.

Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,
All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night.

If over my grave some day thou seest grow,
In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below
The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath’s warm power.

Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if on my cross a bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.

Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;
Let some kind soul o’er my untimely fate sigh,
And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high
From thee, O my country, that in God I may rest.

Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur’d pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried;
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.

And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around,
With only the dead in their vigil to see;
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;
’Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.

When even my grave is remembered no more,
Unmark’d by never a cross nor a stone;
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o’er,
That my ashes may carpet thy earthly floor,
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.

Then will oblivion bring to me no care,
As over thy vales and plains I sweep;
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,
With color and light, with song and lament I fare,
Ever repeating the faith that I keep.

My Fatherland ador’d, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e’er on high!

Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!

—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.

TO EDUCATION

That goddess of garnered ages that sows
For flowers of virtue perennial seeds,
As upward dispensing her light she goes,
Handfast the fatherland, too, she leads.
The breath of her quickening summons she blows
Like winds that bear life to the blossomless meads,
And Wisdom along her pathway upsprings
And Hope is revived in new bourgeonings.

Ay, she has put by for this fatherland
The mortal allures of sleep and of rest,
To weave green laurels with her white hand
On the forehead of Science or Art to be prest!
If on some aureate morrow we stand
Forth gazing as one from a mountain’s crest,
Her spirit that led us from steep to steep
There will our faltering footsteps keep.

Wherever her gleaming white throne may arise,
There with bared brow goes resolute youth;
Error gives back from the glance of her eyes,
Larger and luminous made with Truth;
Vice before her cowering lies,
Pallid and hurtless, with Crime the uncouth.
For she has a magic all potent to make
Wild nations tamest for her sweet sake.

Beneath that throne the fountain is flowing
That waters the plants, the forests, the plains;
Her placid abundance for ever outgoing
For ever increases the store that remains;
In the groves that along her rivers are growing
The spell of her quiet loveliness reigns;
If thence to rude conflict the summons sound
In her is man’s ultimate triumph found.

In her lips is all lore to hearten and guide
The pilgrim that heavenward plods his way,
In her spirit a voice sagacious to chide
Him that has purpose but for a day;
As a shore lashed vainly of impotent tides
Is her faith that knows not of fear or dismay,
As she rises with hand outstretched toward the portals
Where beckon the vistas celestial to mortals.

Where misery sits in its darkness and need,
Behold her lighting the living flame;
She fetters the filching fingers of Greed,
Gives joy for sorrow and honor for shame.
Who takes to his heart her uttermost creed
Makes nobler his life and loftier his aim,
And hers is the cool and dextrous art
That heals the old hurts in the generous heart.

The lighthouse stands on the eternal rock
By the storm-harried seas oft beaten and battered;
The hurricane bellows, the mad waves shock—
On its stirless walls they rise and are shattered,
Till Ocean drives back his disorderly flock
By their futile assailings affrighted and scattered.
So with this goddess it is, whose light
Ill cannot dim through the stormiest night.

Sapphires might serve of her splendors to tell,
Or diamonds weigh out the worth of her glory,
And still fall short of the virtues that swell
In the breasts of her sons that have mastered her story.
From flowers of her planting, their sight or their smell,
Vanishes Self, foul, haggard, and hoary,
But boundless her blessings on them whose thought
Traces the plan that the Nazarene wrought.

Around the ocean’s chrysoprase brim
The Dawn, approaching, broadcast will send
Purple and scarlet, now bright and once dim,
And yet their gorgeous painting suspend
When the sun draws nigh, and in honor of him
Show nothing but golden. So shall ascend
The goddess of knowledge and pour from above
Transfiguring light on the land we love.

—Translated by C. E. R.