Moonlight on Manila Bay

By Fernando M. Maramag (1893 – 1936)

A light, serene, ethereal glory rests

Its beams effulgent on each crestling wave;

The silver touches of the moonlight wave

The deep bare bosom that the breeze molests;

While lingering whispers deepen as the wavy crests

Roll with weird rhythm, now gay, now gently grave;

And floods of lambent light appear the sea to pave-

All cast a spell that heeds not time‘s behests.

Not always such the scene; the din of fight

Has swelled the murmur of the peaceful air;

Here East and West have oft displayed their might;

Dark battle clouds have dimmed this scene so fair;

Here bold Olympia, one historic night,

Presaging freedom, claimed a people‘s care.

To the Man I Married

Angela Manalang-Gloria

You are my earth and all the earth implies:

The gravity that ballasts me in space,

The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries

For food and shelter against devouring days.

You are the earth whose orbit marks my way

And sets my north and south, my east and west,

You are the final, elemented clay

The driven heart must turn to for its rest.

If in your arms that hold me now so near

I lift my keening thoughts to Helicon

As trees long rooted to the earth uprear

Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun,

You who are earth, O never doubt that I

Need you no less because I need the sky!

II

I can not love you with a love

That outcompares the boundless sea,

For that were false, as no such love

And no such ocean can ever be.

But I can love you with a love

As finite as the wave that dies

And dying holds from crest to crest

The blue of everlasting skies.

https://fourteenlines.blog/tag/moonlight-on-manila-bay-by-fernando-maramag/