Question

Moonlight on Manila Bay by Fernando Maramag

Answer 1

Answer:

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.

Marmag’s sonnet is written as a sentimental homage to a simpler time before the Philippine’s became a pawn in the imperial conquests of Japan and the United States. Manila Bay is an important geographical military asset for the country which hoped to control the Pacific ocean.

I harkened at a recent MPR story about the return of a church bell which the United States Navy had taken as a spoil of war in which Maramag’s sonnet is set. The Balangiga town’s church bells were taken as war trophies during the 1899-1902 Philippine-American War and had languished in relative obscurity in an army warehouse. But the Philippine town and the country had not forgotten about them and through an act of contrition and forgiveness the bells were returned after 117 years so that they could be restored to the bell towers in which they belonged, to herald hope that someday we might find ways to negotiate in ways that don’t require domination and subjugation as the starting point but rather equanimity, with the mutual goal of creating the best outcomes for a complex world.