Song of Maria Clara is Featured
in Noli Me Tangere.
Sweet are the
hours in one's own Native Land,
All there is
friendly o'er which the sun shines above;
Vivifying is the
breeze that wafts over her fields;
Even death is
gratifying and more tender is love.
The
first stanza expresses how wonderful everything is in one’s own Native Land.
The hours are sweet, everything is friendly, the breeze is vivifying, love is
more tender, and even death is gratifying. In these four lines, Rizal signifies
that Maria Clara’s love for her country is so great that it colors everything
else that she sees. It is this love that makes everything else, no matter how
mundane and ordinary, more beautiful than even the most beautiful wonders
elsewhere. Their beauty is not a result of their empirical nature, but of their
being rooted in the territory of her country.
Ardent kissed on
a mother's lips are at play,
On her lap, upon
the infant child's awakening,
The extended
arms do seek her neck to entwine,
And the eyes at
each other's glimpse are smiling.
The second
stanza employs metaphor, where the motherland is a human mother and the speaker
in the poem, her infant child.
It is sweet to
die in one's own Native Land,
All there is
friendly o'er which the sun shines above;
And deathly is
the breeze for one without
A country,
without a mother and without love.
Having
employed the use of metaphor in the previous stanza, it now becomes much easier
for any reader of this verse to understand the use of irony in these closing
lines, for how can death be sweet? Death can only be sweet in the arms of the
one you love. As the speaker here likens herself to a child, then no death can
be sweeter than in the arms of her mother. “And deathly,” Rizal closes, “is the
breeze for one without a country, without a mother and without love.”
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| Maria Clara's Lullaby (Chas. Derbyshire's translation) Words by Jose Rizal Music by Juan Hernandez |
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