From A Diary
by Luis G. Dato For her voice was the voice of the weird spirits vernalAnd her hair wore the hue of the unexplored night;When I failed to grasp fully the power supernalWho is kinder than mercy and sterner than might,I…
Luis G. Dato
Filipino Poet, Writer and Educator
Tag life
Luis G. Dato thoughts on life and death.
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BY A TOMBSTONE
by Luis G. Dato Your tears and sighs and loneliness conspireTo cast a shadow o’er this calm moonrise,As lone as you weep by wakeless tombs where liesSome being dearest to your heart’s desire,Your prayers soar to happy heavens higherWhere fines…
END OF THE QUEST
by Luis G. Dato I sought you always in the world’s wide places,In piers and places, 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 not, but only…
THE NEW HELMSMAN
by Luis G. Dato O chosen Helmsman of our Ship of State,With powerful hands and soul filled with light,Te steer the Nation to a happier fate,Toward the Victory long-deferred of Right –Today we cheer to see the overthrowOf evil power…
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…
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…
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…
Life
by Luis G. Dato Alas that life should be a dreamCompared to the unending sun!Rose throbbing o’er the flowing streamToday, tomorrow senseless ground! Alas that we cannot but stayOnly as comes the ocean wind,A sigh we hear above the WayAnd…
THE PAST
by Luis G. Dato With the dead shroud of past days to my face,I find but solitude upon the way,With Memory’s light to guide my pen I traceThis, lest today forget its yesterday. As surely as the rose that we…
Forgotten Songs
By Luis Dato The songs I sang in childhoodWhen I from care was free,Again I hear in momentsEntwined in memory. And with the songs of childhood,The past returns once more,Again I am as yesterday,A child by summer’s shore. God grant…
VIA VITAE
by Luis G. Dato This is the way we all will take (Good heavens! it is near a lake!), Way of all flesh, the way of life Punctuated with incessant strife. Behind the lake, the river winds Its course until…
