THE WRITING’S

OF RIZAL
To My Fellow Children
by Dr. José Rizal
(English version of “Sa Aking mga Kababata”)
 

Whenever people of a country truly love

The language which by heav'n they were taught to use
That country also surely liberty pursue
As does the bird which soars to freer space above.
For language is the final judge and referee
Upon the people in the land where it holds sway;
In truth our human race resembles in this way
The other living beings born in liberty.
Whoever knows not how to love his native tongue
Is worse than any best or evil smelling fish.
To make our language richer ought to be our wish
The same as any mother loves to feed her young.
 
Tagalog and the Latin language are the same
And English and Castilian and the angels' tongue;
And God, whose watchful care o'er all is flung,
Has given us His blessing in the speech we calim,
 
Our mother tongue, like all the highest tht we know
Had alphabet and letters of its very own;
But these were lost -- by furious waves were overthrown
Like bancas in the stormy sea, long years ago.
My First Inspiration
Why do scented flowers
In fragrant fray
Rizal each other’s flowers
This festive day?

Why is sweet melody bruited

In the sylvan day
Harmony sweet and fluted
Like the nightingale?
Why do birds sing so
In the gender grass,
Flitting from bough to bough
With the wind that pass?

And why the cystal spring

Run among the flowers
While lullaby zephyrs sing
Like its crystal shower
I see the dawn in the east
With beauty endowed.
Why she goes to a feast
In a carmine cloud?
Sweet mother, they celebrate
You natal day
The rose with scent innate,
The bird with his lay.
Sweet mother, they celebrate
You natal day
The rose with her scent innate,
The bird with his lay.
The Filipino Youth
(Theme:Grow O, Timid flower.)
Hold high the brow serene,
O, youth where now you stand,
Let the bright sheen
Of your grace be seen,

Fair hope of fatherland

Come now, thou genius grand,
And bring down the inspiration;
With thy mighty hand
Swifter than the winds volition
Raise the eager mind to higher sation
Come down with pleasing light
Of art and sciences and to the flight
O, youth and there untie
The chains that heavy lie

Your spirits free to bright.

See how in flaming zone
Amid the shadows thrown
The Spaniards holy land
A crowns resplendent band
Proffers to the Indian land.
Thou, who now would rise.
On wings of rich empires
Seek from the Olympian skies
Songs of sweetest strain.

Soften than the ambrosial rain

Thou, whose voice devine
Rivals philomels refrain
And with varied line
Through the night benign
Frees mortality from pain
Thou, who by short strife
Wakest thy mind to life
And the memory bright
Of thy genioud light

Makes immoral in its strength

And thou, in accents clear
Of Phoebus, to Apollo's dear;
Or by the brush’s magic art
Takest from nature’s store apart
To fix on the simple canvas length
Go fort, and then scared fire
Of they genius to the laurel may aspire
To spread around the flame
And in victory acclaim
Through undere spheres human name

Day, O happy day

Fair Filipinas, for thy land.
So bless the power today
The places in thy way
This favor and this fortune grand.
They ask me for Verses
You bid now to strike the lyre
That mute and torn so long has lain
And yet I cannot wake the strain
Not will the muse one not inspired
Coldly, it shakes in accent dire
As if my soul itself tow ring
And it seems sound but to fling
A jest at its own lament
So in said isolate pent,
My soul can neither feel nor sing.
There was a time-ah, its too true
But time long ago has past—
When upon me the muse and cast
Indulgent smile and friendship due;
But of that age now all too few
The thoughts that with yet will stay;
As the hours of festive play
There linger on mysterious note
And in our mind the memory floats
Of ministry and music gay
A plant I am, that scarcely grown,
Was torn out its Eastern bed
Where all around perfumed is shed
And life but as a dream is known;
The land that I can call my own
By me forgotten neer to be.
Where thrilling birds their song thought me
And cascades with their ceaseless roar,
And all along the spreading shore
The murmurs of the sounding sea
While yet in childhoods happy day
I Learn upon its sun to smile
And in my breast there seems the while,
Seething volcanic fires to play

A bard I was, my wish always

To call upon the fleeting wind,
“Go forth, and spread around its flame,
From zone to zone with glad acclaim,
And earth to heaven together bind.
But it left, and now no more like
A tree that is broken and sere-
My natural god brings the echo clear
Of songs that in past times they bore
Wide seas I cross to foreign shore

With hope of change and other fate,

My fully was made clear too late,
For in the place of good I sought
The seas reveal unto nought
But made death’s specre on me wait.
All these fond fancies that were mine,
All love, all feeling all emprise
Were left beneath the sunny skies
Which o’er that flowery region shine
So press no more that plea of mine
For songs of love from out of heart
That coldly lies tortur’the soul I haste
Unrestingly o’er desert waste
And lifeless gone is all the art.
To the flowers of Heidelberg
Go to my native land, go, foreign flowers.
Sown by the traveler on his way
And there, beneath its azure sky,
Where all my affections lie;
There from the weary pilgrim say,
What faith is his in that land of ours!
Go there and tell how when the dawn
Her early light diffusing.
Your petals first flung open wide;
His steps beside chill Neckar drawn,
You see him silent by your side.
Upon its spring perennial musing
 
Saw how mornings lights,
All your fragrance stealing
Whisper you as in mirth,
Playful songs of Love's delight
He, too, murmurs his loves feeling
In the tongue he learned at birth
That when the sun of Keenugsthul's heights
Pours out its golden flood,
And with its slowly warming light
Gives life to vale and grove and wood
He greats thw sun, her on upraising
Which in hus native land is at its zenith blazing
All tell there that day he stod,
Near to ruin castle gray
By neckars banks, or shady wood
And pluck you from beside the way
tell, too, that tale to you addressed
And how with tender care,
You bending leaves he press’d
Twist pages of some volume rare
Bear them, O flowers, love message bear;
my love to all lov’d ones there,
Peace to my country-fruitful land-
Fait whereon its son may stand
And virtue for its daughter care
All those beloved creatures greet
That still around home’s altar meet.
And when you come into its shore,
This kiss I now bestow,
Fling where the winged breezes blow;
That borne on them it may hover o’er
All that I love, esteem, and adore
But though, O flowers, you came unto the land,
And still perchance, your colors hold;
So far from his heroic strand
Whose soil first bade you life unfold
Still here you fragrance will expand
Your soul that never quits the earth
Whose life smiled on you at your
The Song of Maria Clara

Sweet are the hours in one’s native land,

Where all is dear the sunbeams bless;
Life giving breeze sweep the strand,
And death is soften’d by love’s cares

Warm kisses play on mother’s lips,

On her fond, tender breast awakening;
When around her neck the soft arm slips,
And bright eyes smile, all love partaking.
Sweet is death for one’s native land
Where all is dear the sun beams bless;
Death is the breeze that sweeps the strand,
Without a mother, home, or love’s caress.
 
The song of the traveler
Like to a leaf that is fallen and withered,
Tossed by the tempest from pole unto pole;
Thus roams the pilgrims abroad without purpose,
Roams without love, without country or soil.
Following anxiously treacherous fortune;
Fortune which ne’er as he grasps as it flees,
Vain though the hopes that his yearning is seeking
Yet does the pilgrim embark on the seas.
 
Ever impelled by the invisible power,
Destined to roam from the East to the West;
Of the remembers the faces of love ones,
Dreams of the day when he, too, was at rest
Chance may assign him tomb of the desert,
Grant him a final asylum of peace;
Soon by the world and his country forgotten,
God rest his soul when his wanderings cease!
 
Often the sorrowing pilgrim is envied,
Circling the globe like a seagull above;
Little, ah,little they know what a void
Saddens his soul be the absence of love.
Pilgrims, be gone! Nor return more herafter,
Stranger thou art in the land of thy birth;
Others may sing of their love while rejoicing,
To ones again must roam o’er the earth.
 
Pilgrims, begone! Nor return herafter,
Dry are the tears that awhile for thee ran;
Pilgrim, begone! And forget thine affliction,
Loud laughs the world at the sorrows of man.
Hymn to labor
Chorus:
For our country in war
For our country in peace
The Filipino will be ready
While he lives and when he dies.
 
Men:
As soon as the East is tinted with light
Forth the fields to flow the loam!
Since it is work that sustains the man,
The motherland, family, and the home.
Hard though the soil may prove to be,
Implacable the sun above,
For motherland, our wives and babes,
T’will be easy with our love.
Wives:
Courageously set out to work,
You home is safe with a faithful wife
Implanting in her children,love
For wisdom, land and virtouos life.
When nightfall bring us to our rest,
May smiling fortune guard our door;
But if cruel fate should harm her man,
The wife would toil on as before.
Girls:
Hail! Hail! Give praise to work!
The country’s vigor and her wealth;
For work lift up you brow serene
It is your blood, your life, our health.
If any youth protests his love
His works shall prove if he is good.
That man alone who strives and toils
Can find the way to feed his brood.
 
Boys:
Teach us then the hardest task
For down thy trails we turn our feet
That when our country calls tomorrow
Thy purposes,we may complete.
And may our elders say,who see us,
See! How worthy of their sires!
No incense can exalt our dead ones
Like a brave son who aspires.