WITH YOU OUR HOPES
by Luis G. Dato Hail to our chief, the chosen helmsman dearOf this our vessel that will ride the mainOur hope we pin on him our trust to steerWith a strong hand the distant land to gain. To guide on…
Category POEM
“One cannot write unless one has known satiety, debauchery, and the intimacy of desire, and can remember them “in moments of tranquility.”
— Luis G. Dato, Philippines Herald Mid-week Magazine in April 6, 1932
LIFE IN THE BARRIO (Irayang Solong)
by Luis G. Dato IHow blessed the barrio life of ease,Where man is with the world at peace!Those pristine days, those sunny hoursWhen field and tree are gemmed with flowers,Khaki and blue or yellow-hued,To deck each marsh and bank and…
The Stars Of Yesterday
by Luis G. Dato To us at lo, those were the halcyon years,The Golden Age which Memory endears,Of titans clashing in the wild uproar,Where be they now, the Bikol Meets of yore? With pouch and flabby, diabetic arm,We now no…
HAIL, PHILIPPINE REPUBLIC!
by Luis G. Dato Hail, Philippine, O my dear native land,Where sampaguitas, ylang-ylang bloom,Let thy sweet music sound from every strand,Which knew for centuries the tyrant’s doom;As pearl of orient seas the bards have sungThy beauty rare, thy scenic charm…
NAGA: IN RETROSPECT
by Luis G. Dato How like Elysium were the prewar times,When Freedom reigned and life seemed free from care,Then was our Naga gay, with houses filledHer nights turned day, her flowers suffused the air. Where’er went, turn wheresoe’er our eyesWere…
REST IN PEACE
By Luis G. Dato (Dedicated to the memory of Baao’s war dead, especially those who perished in the massacre of Agdangan, (San Cayetano), Baao, Camarines Sur, October 17, 1944). Blessed are the souls that have gone by,By Japanese monsters crushed…
Happy
by Luis G. Dato A wood-thrush perches on a banana leaf.Breathing, living, resting, with one wing stretched;It has no thought to destroy, the configuration of itsIt does not know if a star in its travel peace,Pauses in its orbit, stands…
Sonnet on Death
by Luis G. Dato Death, inevitable hour that e’er will holdFor us a stretch of pained anxiety.Whose gates wide open we can never see,Nor these to close suffice the dead man’s gold —Within our beings is it hourly toldThat we…
The Sea
by Luis G. Dato Bright wisps of sea careering as I dreamAnd sit beside my sorrow in the shore,In wakeful slumber must you bide no moreBut rise beneath my feet and in a streamOf silver in the fading twilight seemTo…
To Burgos, Gomez and Zamora
(From Rizal’s Dedication) by Luis G. Dato A time was there when in the cruel throesOf unborn Right a nation’s blood was shed.Times of travail when, threatening and dread.The gallows shouted “Death!” at once to thoseWho from a trodden native…
My Days of Dreaming
by Luis G. Dato Long have I spent my days of youth in dreamingA life of love when you by fate were mine,Long have I sighed through time, the long hours deemingMe happy in our eyes divine. Long have I…
Love’s Why
by Luis G. Dato I love that I may callTo mind the buried past,That through Time’s heavy pallThe dead may wake at last. I love that as I sighAbove an empty earth,l might forget and dieAnd rest me of this…
