By: Jose Rizal I They bid me strike the lyre I felt in my bosom, seething, so long now mute and broken, a fierce volcano ablaze. but not a note can I waken A poet was I, for I wanted nor will my muse inspire! with my verses, with my breath, She stammers coldly and babbles to say to the swift wind: "Fly when tortured by my mind; and propagate her renown! she lies when she laughs and thrills Praise her from zone to zone, as she lies in her lamentation, from the earth up to the sky!" for in my sad isolation my soul nor frolics nor feels. V II There was a time, ’tis true, I left her! My native hearth, but now that time has vanished a tree despoiled and shriveled, when indulgent love or friendship no longer repeats the echo called me a poet too. of my old songs of mirth. Now of that time there lingers I sailed across the vast ocean, hardly a memory, craving to change my fate, as from a celebration not noting, in my madness, some mysterious refrain that, instead of the weal I sought, that haunts the ears will remain the sea around me wrought of the orchestra’s actuation. the spectre of death and sadness. III A scarce-grown plant I seem, uprooted from the Orient, The dreams of younger hours, where perfume is the atmosphere love, enthusiasm, desire, and where life is a dream. have been left there under the skies O land that is never forgotten! of that fair land of flowers. And these have taught me to sing: Oh, do not ask of my heart the birds with their melody, that languishes, songs of love! the cataracts with their force For, as without peace I tread and, on the swollen shores, this desert of no surprises, the murmuring of the sea. I feel that my soul agonizes IV and that my spirit is dead.