XXXVI
by Luis G. Dato If I should come to grief because to you Love is not love to earth’s censorious eyes,Dreaming it sinful and profane with lies Or that it fails in honor in your view; If love must grieve…
Category SONNET
“Poetry lives on love, and love is nothing but the worship of woman.”
Luis G. Dato, Philippines Herald Mid-week Magazine, April 6, 1932
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XXXV
by Luis Dato I sought you always in the world’s wide places, In piers and palaces, the roaring street. Where the world’s pilgrims worn with aching feet, Seek as I sought you mid strange, unknown faces. Albeit I found you…
XXXVI CHIAROSCURO AT DAWN
by Luis G. Dato I love the chiaroscuro of the dawn, When day lies hushed as in some catacomb Without its gold, the night without its gloom; On the horizon, each a smoking cone, Loom the dark hills, and clouds,…
XXXIII BUT DAWN ALWAYS COMES
by Luis G. Dato Dear God, grant that the night no dawn may follow, And thus be dumb to any wakening, In quiet lands of slumber no such thing Intrude on dreams as some harsh-featured morrow; Oh, that the night…
XXXI
by Luis G. Dato The glory then of loving pratest thou, Although the love be vain? Thus others, yet Not so the heart that wills not to forget, And they who speak, of love’s woe do they know? For rather…
TO A LADY HID BEHIND COSMOS FLOWERS
by Luis G. Dato Lady by yonder window grilled and barred, Your face by cosmos flowers fully hidden, The more my morning’s heaven because forbidden More sought since worlds for such as you have warred; Your mystery the clustering flowers…
XXX IN THE TWILIGHT (1938)
by Luis G. Dato As when the sun descending from the west Withdraws from dusky earth her warming ray, And twilight’s rose the fond eyes cannot stay, But leaves within the heart a sigh compressed; Or, as when after sullen…
XI (LONE IN FEBRUARY)
by Luis G. Dato If but the wind could be love’s embassy, How changed so soon would be my melancholy, Then would I with importuned instancy, Tell of my grief of heart who loved you solely: Then would the wind…
SONNET
by Luis G. Dato This day when waking from perturbed sleep, I see the dim night die upon the dawn, And gaze on gleaming hill and dewy lawn,On sunbeams soft that o’er the valley peep; When Nature seems with ecstasy…
CHRIST OF THE ANDES
by Luis Dato O Christ! it cannot that You will stand With hand uplifted to a warring world Fore’er unheeding, battle flags unfurled In ceaseless combat deaf to Your command. It cannot be that with Your Cross in hand The…
TO JESUS CRUCIFIED
(Sonnet attributed to St. Francis Xavier) by Luis G. Dato It does not move me, Lord, Thyself to love, This after Heaven thou has promised me, Nor fires of Hell that burn eternally, To cease offending thee my spirit move.…
SONNET TO CHRIST
by Luis G. Dato When in the rush for fortune and for fame, For man’s applause that will not long abide, I stifle soul and conscience lay aside, The better thus to fight unarmed with shame; When to the refuge…
