
CIV
by Luis G. Dato When I am dead, will you then think of me More kindly, when I cease to haunt you dear Or dog your steps in school or church no more, Will I seem better in the memory,…
“Poetry lives on love, and love is nothing but the worship of woman.”
Luis G. Dato, Philippines Herald Mid-week Magazine, April 6, 1932
by Luis G. Dato When I am dead, will you then think of me More kindly, when I cease to haunt you dear Or dog your steps in school or church no more, Will I seem better in the memory,…
by Luis G. Dato If I should die, no sigh of yours shall call Back to the living and the world the dead, And not your tears in tardy pity shed Shall make arise the dead that you let fall.…
by Luis G. Dato And life shall pass, and leaf by leaf, its tree That, mighty, from its seed earth has seen grow, Sturdy of trunk and stately, spreading bough, With blossoms in due season fruits to be, Will grace…
by Luis G. Dato O dear, as each day passes we grow old And those smooth cheeks each time I would fain kiss, And those warm lips, the vortex of my bliss Will not forever Time’s assault to with hold.…
by Luis G. Dato O the black moment when you parted from Our place, the sudden unexpectedness, The prospect of drear days, the emptiness, The silent school, once like a second home, Turned into sobbing ones, where small tots come…
by Luis G. Dato Have I been wrong, was I not overwise When of my heart to you I gave the key, Was it all folly on the part of me, Succumbing senseless to lone’s witcheries? Is it that in…
by Luis G. Dato O punctuate my sonnets with your voice, Give periods and the commas to my lines, For word with word with slippery ease combines, And in the process difficult the choice. Mix, intersperse love with earth-earthy Joyce,…
by Luis G. Dato I love you with each rhyme, with every beat And foot and meter, each throb of my heart. When you come near and when you stay apart, I find in every word a message sweet That…
by Luis G. Dato On an uneven keel my ships of song Have sailed the seas and oceans of our time, Not always flawless have been all our rhyme, The masts astern of meter not all strong. My barks have…
by Luis G. Dato And now this mountain that we see beyond, Blue from a distance, green as we go near, Pair, beautiful she ever shall appear, With Nature and with earth our common bond. Of all her changing moods…
by Luis G. Dato How bright yon star gleams o’er the coco palms, All other stars of evening to outshine, Illumining this sorrowful life of mine, Where love receives not for its pains and alms. Fair evening in the starlight…
by Luis G. Dato Then let us now our love, dear, consummate And reap our roses while they are in bloom, Soon, ere we know it, we shall each make room For others and for us it will be late,…