Of leaves and season [poems]
Media
Part of Philippine Educator
- Title
- Of leaves and season [poems]
- Creator
- Espinas, Salvador B.
- Language
- English
- Source
- Philippine Educator, XII (3) August 1957
- Year
- 1957
- Subject
- Poetry (Literary form)
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- its prov1s10ns by rote in school like arithmetic and spelling and the Lord's prayer, and not because we sincerely and consciously believe it to be the best and surest guaranty of the way of life which we regard as the sole foundation of our present and future welfare. live in our actions, both as individuals and as a people, in the e1 nlightened conviction and steadfast belief that only in the spirit of the Constitution, made flesh among us, shall -democracy abide with us and our nation forever enjoy the blessings of independence under a regime of justice and liberty. The Constitution, through which all good things in our democratic system of government came into being, and without which they could not have come to be, is the light of our nation, but this light cannot illumine those in the darkness, who neither understand it nor love it, because men of little faith, Pharisees and money-changers, a generation of vipers, in the angry words of the Lord, have hidden it under the bushel of their hypocrisy and greed. But neither in the toils of the day nor .in the vigils of the night can the sentinels of the Constitution relax their vigilance. Let us therefore all be wary and stand upon our arms, lest, by culpable tolerance or by criminal indifference, our country should in some desolate future become a desert of liberty, wherein only the massive ruins of our republic shall remain magnificent but tragic monuments of the past, in whose desecrated labyrinths our descendents, by then the forlorn bondsmen of some corrupt despot, shall in vain endeavor to decipher the language of the Consitution, inscribed, as in forgotten hieroglyphs, on the sareophagus of our lost freedoms. Let us then bear witness to the Constitution, so that, in the language of the gospels, all the people may learn to believe. If our nation is to survive and attain greatness in freedom, the Constitution must PAGE 66 TWO POEMS: Of Leaves and Season Watch the luxury of summer, Behold the leaves uncurl Red, green and yellow - Big and small reaching for the sun ... And listen To the elected tale Of leafing boughs and leaftips Pointing to the sky; · Of early bird and wind. Why too brief this sea.!on, This miserly grace - Even the bravest leaf falls When summer ends. Rivers I have crossed many rivers Wide and rough, Braved many a tempest Over atrocious rocks, But conquest is ever far At dusk New rivers rise Wider and rougher Than edges of vicious winds. -By Salvador B. Espinas Jovellar, Albay THE PHILIPPINE EDUCATOR