The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
Ever repeating the faith that I keep.
My Fatherland ador’d, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e’er on high!
Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
TO EDUCATION
That goddess of garnered ages that sows
For flowers of virtue perennial seeds,
As upward dispensing her light she goes,
Handfast the fatherland, too, she leads.
The breath of her quickening summons she blows
Like winds that bear life to the blossomless meads,
And Wisdom along her pathway upsprings
And Hope is revived in new bourgeonings.
Ay, she has put by for this fatherland
The mortal allures of sleep and of rest,
To weave green laurels with her white hand
On the forehead of Science or Art to be prest!
If on some aureate morrow we stand
Forth gazing as one from a mountain’s crest,
Her spirit that led us from steep to steep
There will our faltering footsteps keep.
Wherever her gleaming white throne may arise,
There with bared brow goes resolute youth;
Error gives back from the glance of her eyes,
Larger and luminous made with Truth;
Vice before her cowering lies,
Pallid and hurtless, with Crime the uncouth.
For she has a magic all potent to make
Wild nations tamest for her sweet sake.
Beneath that throne the fountain is flowing
That waters the plants, the forests, the plains;
Her placid abundance for ever outgoing
For ever increases the store that remains;
In the groves that along her rivers are growing
The spell of her quiet loveliness reigns;
If thence to rude conflict the summons sound
In her is man’s ultimate triumph found.
In her lips is all lore to hearten and guide
The pilgrim that heavenward plods his way,
In her spirit a voice sagacious to chide
Him that has purpose but for a day;
As a shore lashed vainly of impotent tides
Is her faith that knows not of fear or dismay,
As she rises with hand outstretched toward the portals
Where beckon the vistas celestial to mortals.
Where misery sits in its darkness and need,
Behold her lighting the living flame;
She fetters the filching fingers of Greed,
Gives joy for sorrow and honor for shame.
Who takes to his heart her uttermost creed
Makes nobler his life and loftier his aim,
And hers is the cool and dextrous art
That heals the old hurts in the generous heart.
The lighthouse stands on the eternal rock
By the storm-harried seas oft beaten and battered;
The hurricane bellows, the mad waves shock—
On its stirless walls they rise and are shattered,
Till Ocean drives back his disorderly flock
By their futile assailings affrighted and scattered.
So with this goddess it is, whose light
Ill cannot dim through the stormiest night.
Sapphires might serve of her splendors to tell,
Or diamonds weigh out the worth of her glory,
And still fall short of the virtues that swell
In the breasts of her sons that have mastered her story.
From flowers of her planting, their sight or their smell,
Vanishes Self, foul, haggard, and hoary,
But boundless her blessings on them whose thought
Traces the plan that the Nazarene wrought.
Around the ocean’s chrysoprase brim
The Dawn, approaching, broadcast will send
Purple and scarlet, now bright and once dim,
And yet their gorgeous painting suspend
When the sun draws nigh, and in honor of him
Show nothing but golden. So shall ascend
The goddess of knowledge and pour from above
Transfiguring light on the land we love.
—Translated by C. E. R.
APPENDIX B
RIZAL AS A PATRIOT, AUTHOR, AND SCIENTIST
By Francis Burton Harrison, Governor-General 1915–21
[Of all the governor-generals the Philippines have had, Mr. Harrison
was the most beloved by the islanders. He seemed to have an instinctive
sympathy with them and after his retirement from office testified to
their worth in a remarkable book, “The Cornerstone of Philippine
Independence.” The comments that follow are extracts from an address he
delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of Rizal Hall, Philippine
University, December 15, 1919.]
Addressing a university audience, I have selected three points in the
life and writing of Dr. Rizal for your consideration. First is his
patriotism. This university must devote its best efforts to teaching
the students of to-day and those of coming generations that form of
pure and unselfish patriotism that we find in the writings and sayings
of Dr. Rizal. We have been gratified to follow the course in debate and
in action of the students of this university in devoting their
attention in a purely non-partizan way to the consideration of public
questions of the day, but I address myself to the faculty as well as to
the students for consideration of the form which that patriotism should
take. In the days of my grandfather young men in America went to
Germany to study at the universities. That was the golden age when the
teachings and memory of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Heine inspired
the youth of the land and brought about a political movement that was
crushed and ended in 1848 in the death of liberalism and the beginning
of modern autocracy. Those of us that were educated in German
literature can scarcely understand the Germany of the last three
decades, and yet, in my opinion, their devotion to the religion of
brutality and force is to be found in the teachings of their modern
university professors—an example that has terrified all mankind and
threatened the liberties of the world. So I say the teaching of pure
patriotism must always be dedicated to the promotion of liberties, the
liberty of thought, of the individual, to the care of the welfare of
the common people, and for the progress and advancement in modern
science of learning of the people of the Philippine Islands.
The literary aspect of Rizal’s works should commend itself to each of
you as an inspiration to do your own duty. I think no man can read
Rizal’s novels without feeling his powerful impulse of sympathy for and
understanding of the people of this country. We can be moved not only
by his profound reading of human nature, but we can also be inspired to
emulate, if we may, the high level of talent for which his name will
ever be famous in the history of literature. Here in the Philippines I
would, if I could, arouse you to more earnest devotion to a literary
career. You have natural advantages second to no country in the world.
Your history is replete with incidents and romance and your present
latter-day development is a true inspiration to the youth of the world
in all countries. Last winter when I returned to New York for my first
vacation home I remember one particularly dark and gloomy day when the
people on the streets, which are nothing more than cañons between high
buildings of stone and glass, were jostling one another without a spark
of human sympathy or appreciation, conscious competitors in the
struggle for the survival of the fittest; and my mind went back to
those scenes of every-day life in the Philippines, to this land of
lofty mountains, of clear water running to the sea, the sunsets across
Mariveles Mountain, the dawn over Mount Arayat, the blue haze upon the
rice-fields in the evening—all the familiar scenes and sounds of a life
animate by the sun and made happy by the richness of nature. As I
remembered the deep and tender lights of the coconut groves and the
busy industry of your daily life, I said to myself, “There is a country
which could inspire any man to literary efforts with all its wealth of
romance.” When I recall the history of the Philippine Islands, the
coming of the Christians with the sword and flaming cross, the coming
of the Mohammedans, with the crescent and the crooked creese and their
cry in many a hard-fought battle, the enterprise of the Spaniard in
spiritual teachings as well as in material investments, the shouts of
Legaspi’s sailors across Manila Bay, the guns of Dewey so many
generations later, the efforts of our country to establish here our
principles of democracy, it seems to me that any young man or woman
born upon this soil and inspired by these ideas has an opportunity to
take a place in the very foremost ranks of literature and history and
show to the world not only what has been done here in education but
what the world may expect of the Filipino people when they take their
rank as an independent member of the brotherhood of nations.
In the scientific aspect of his teachings Rizal ranked high in public
appreciation, higher indeed in other countries than at that time he was
allowed to rank here. He was recognized for his scientific work in
ethnology, in zoölogy, and in botany in England and in the leading
universities of Germany. Upon his death, the most distinguished
scientist in Germany of that day, Professor Virchow, stated that this
was a murder of the most prominent scientist that Spain possessed. In
my opinion Rizal’s greatest services to the cause of the human race
were those scientific impulses which he gave to the world of his duty,
and the martyrdom which he suffered was but another example of the
determination of organized society in every age to eliminate those that
by the pure processes of reason have arrived at new theories for the
conduct and welfare of mankind. From the day of Socrates, who was put
to death by the citizens of Athens for teaching the young men to think
for themselves, down to that morning in December, 1896, when Rizal was
done to death by the firing-squad at Bagumbayan, the pages of history
have run red with the murder of men of science. In Europe of the Middle
Ages the names of Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Agrippa,
Campanella, Kepler, Lavoisier, of Priestly, and many others of less
distinction in the annals of history have shown what struggles the
human mind has been called upon to endure and to what stress the human
body has been put in the efforts of science to liberate the human
mind....
Bearing all these things in mind, it seems to me that we can justly
appreciate Rizal’s love of science and his final martyrdom as the
greatest contribution to the freedom of thought ever given by any one
man to the Filipino people. This hall which we are about to dedicate,
reserved as it is to be for the study of science, is the most fitting
monument to the name of Rizal that could be devised. Were he alive
to-day I have no doubt he would feel an infinitely greater inspiration
in the thought that his name was to be attached to this great edifice
and that his memory was to be preserved by the study of young
Filipinos, men and women, in the natural sciences than he would be in
that splendid statue erected down there on the Bagumbayan to perpetuate
the memory of his patriotic death.
Now, my friends, in dedicating this edifice to progress, I believe that
it will stand for progress as long as the Filipino people themselves
remain progressive and as long as you will fight the battle for liberty
of thought and of reason, and, I believe, also, that Dr. Rizal, if he