One by one they have passed on, All I loved and moved among; Dead or married--from me gone, For all I place my heart upon By fate adverse are stung. Go thou too, O Muse, depart; Other regions fairer find; For my land but offers art For the laurel, chains that bind, For a temple, prisons blind. But before thou leavest me, speak; Tell me with thy voice sublime, Thou couldst ever from me seek A song of sorrow for the weak, Defiance to the tyrant's crime. From "A Mi Musa" (1884), requested by a young lady of Madrid. NOTES [1] An encomendero was a Spanish soldier who as a reward for faithful service was set over a district with power to collect tribute and the duty of providing the people with legal protection and religious instruction. This arrangement is memorable in early Philippine annals chiefly for the flagrant abuses that appear to have characterized it. [2] No official was allowed to leave the Islands at the expiration of his term of office until his successor or a council appointed by the sovereign inquired into all the acts of his administration and approved them. (This residencia was a fertile source of recrimination and retaliation, so the author quite aptly refers to it a little further on as "the ancient show of justice." [3] The penal code was promulgated in the Islands by Royal Order of September 4, 1884. [4] Cervantes' "Don Quijote," Part II, chapter 47. End of Project Gutenberg's The Philippines A Century Hence, by Jose Rizal