(COMPLETE) "Scene so fair" in Fernando M. Maramag's Poems

Fernando M. Maramag

MOONLIGHT ON MANILA BAY 

1                       A light serene, ethereal glory, rests

                        It beams effulgent on each cresting wave;

                        The silver touches of the moonlight lave

                        The deep’s bare bosom that the breeze molests;

5                      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

10                     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.

(1912)


Fernando Maramag’s “Moonlight on Manila Bay,” follows a speaker’s train of reflection as he is moved by the serene beauty of Manila Bay on a moonlit night. As he reflects on the history of the Bay, he describes the native scene as paradisal whose “light serene, ethereal glory”—suggests a Romantic idea of a scene of quiet splendor from a mythical time “that heeds not time’s behests.” And on that Bay, he recalls, is where “East and West have oft displayed their might” to wrest and so “dimmed this scene so fair.” He also recalls “one historic night” when “bold Olympia”—Admiral George Dewey’s flagship bombarded a Spanish fleet, freeing our country from the 300 years of Spanish tyranny. It was then the Americans who “claimed a people’s care.”

Although the poem somewhat pro-American for it was they who saved our land, the title itself, I think, subverts that kind of impression. Why do you think the poet insisted upon “Moonlight on Manila Bay” instead of “Sunset of Manila Bay,” which the Bay is actually famous for. A moonlight is a deceitful light. It is under the spell of darkness. And so our reading of “people’s care” becomes ironic.

Also, in regards to the conventional form of poetry that has been constructed in “Moonlight on Manila Bay”, it is a sonnet with 14 lines a rhyming scheme abba-abba for its first eight verses and cdcd-ed in the next six verses. Moreover, it follows a strict imitation of Romantic and Victorian poetic diction.

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Fernando M. Maramag

CAGAYANO PEASANT SONG

                        And grossly that man errs who should suppose

                        That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,

                        Were things indifferent to the shepherd’s thoughts.

                                                                        --Wordsworth

                                               I.             

1                      In the shady woods I know

                        Where the bashful jungle fowls are keeping

                        Their helpless young. They are below

                        The trees by which the rill is weeping.

                                               II.             

5                      Beneath the rapid’s frown

                        Where the white ripples madly run,

                        There is where I have known

                        Fair itubi is courted by luran.

                                               III.             

                        And if to me ‘twere only known

10                    Where the heron’s eggs are laid

                        In the deep still river’s bed,

                        They were treasures rare to own.

(1912)


Essentially, Fernando Maramag’s “Cagayano Peasant Song,” is a pastoral poem describing a typical Filipino rural scene. The poem begins with an epigraph from William Wordsworth, an English Romantic poet. The poem is in three stanzas with four lines each stanza. Each stanza is numbered in Arabic numerals. The first two stanzas follows a rhythm but the rhythm was lost in the third stanza.

The poem follows a persona (perhaps a an ordinary person native to the land) describing the familiar woods where the “bashful jungle fowls” lives and the river where he usually sees freshwater fishes “Fair itubi is courted by luran.” But he bewails to say that the once “deep still river’s bed” where ‘the heron’s eggs are laid” will only be remembered in memory: “They were treasures rare to own.”
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Fernando M. Maramag

THE DREAMER’S HERITAGE

1                       Thou dreamer of melancholy songs,

                                    What heritage is thine?--

                        The epic line in all things fair,

                                    Its harmony is mine.

5                       Their Eden joy and lingering pain,

                                    They pass into my soul,

                        For joy and pain have melodies

                                    That through my being roll.

                        And less are science and philosophy

10                                  Than an immortal line

                        Whose notes sublime in mortal man

                                    May reach the man divine.

                        And heir am I to a sweet desire

                                    To charm from out all things

15                      Truth’s essence that to the spirit yields

                                    Themes for its murmurings:

                        Ah! not a rose with cankered leaves

                                    But claims from me a sigh;

                        And not a maid with a lyric grace

20                                  But wakes a lyric cry.

                        What is’t to gaze at a virgin’s face

                                    And read the love that’s there?

                        A lily seen in the dusk of dawn

                                    Is not more pure, more fair.

25                      Each feeling finds an echo

                                    In ev’ry beauty that I see;

                        The music of their form, their poetry--

                                    A heritage for me.

(1912)

I imagine the speaker is a rural folk telling the reader how beautiful and harmonious it was then being enchanted by nature’s lyric grace. It a kind of feeling where “Each feeling finds an echo In ev’ry beauty that I see;/ The music of their form, their poetry--/A heritage for me.//