By Luis Dato
Harvest
‘Mid stalks low-bending with sun-ripened grain,
You loomed upon my ravished, sinful eyes;
I listened lost in wondering surprise,
While in the evening rang your sweet refrain.
Weeping, I wished I were some hamlet swain,
And, like him, quietened into looks and sighs,
Your face to love till in me should arise
An olden whisper lifting life from pain.
Child-heart, for whom no cup of sorrow fills,
In innocence these valleys dwell among,
Here, by the murmur of the mountain-rills,
Live, where love’s word to utter seems but wrong;
Love were only sorrow to your heart of song,
And I would hear no singing in the hills.
Birth of Beauty
INTO the sorrow of my night you came,
A world of love inflowered in your face,
Aid limbs whose blue-veined loveliness were trace
Of charm more secret and too fair for name.
Down all the earth, the garden was the same
Of studied charm and soul-betraying grace,
Till you came forth from some far dwelling-place,
And, heaven-like, with humans kindred claim.
Of earth you seemed not, in your glance and look
Shone clear a light of glory then not here,
Perhaps some angel in a dream looked down
On mortals, and with pitying hope and fear,
The bough of heaven in the night forsook,
To bring to earth the heaven it had known
— Philippine Magazine, June 1932
