To this and nothing else he had looked forward from the beginning of the hearing. Some nights before the verdict, knowing well what it would be, he had written in his cell by the light of his little alcohol lamp his farewell to his country, his family, and his friends. It is that poem now become the national classic of the Philippines, the beautiful and tender elegy that he called “My Last Farewell.” On the last night he folded the manuscript and hid it in the bowl of the lamp. Of this marvelous production, almost unequaled in literature for its pathetic sincerity and noble feeling, there exist in English two versions. [213] That which seems the more adequately to express the thought of the original we offer here, and his must be a strangely indurated heart that can read it without emotion: Land I adore, farewell! thou land of the southern sun’s choosing. Pearl of the Orient seas! our forfeited Garden of Eden, Joyous, I yield up for thee my sad life, and were it far brighter, Young, or rose-strewn, for thee and thy happiness still would I give it. Far afield, in the din and rush of maddening battle, Others have laid down their lives, nor wavered, nor paused, in the giving. What matters way or place—the cypress, the lily, the laurel, Gibbet or open field, the sword or inglorious torture— When ’tis the hearth and the country that call for the life’s immolation? Dawn’s faint lights bar the east; she smiles through the cowl of the darkness, Just as I die.... Vision I followed from afar, desire that spurred on and consumed me! Greeting! my parting soul cries, and greeting again! O my country! Beautiful is it to fall, that the vision may rise to fulfilment Giving my life for thy life, and breathing thine air in the death-throe; Sweet to eternally sleep in thy lap, O land of enchantment! If in the deep rich grass that covers my rest in thy bosom, Some day thou seest upspring a lowly tremulous blossom, Lay there thy lips—’tis my soul!... And if at eventide a soul for my tranquil sleep prayeth, Pray thou, O my fatherland! for my peaceful reposing; Pray for those who go down to death through unspeakable torments; Pray for those who remain to suffer torture in prison; Pray for the bitter grief of our mothers, our wives, our orphans; Oh, pray, too, for thyself, on the way to thy final redemption!