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The Eternal Light: Dr. Jose P. Rizal

1) The oratorical piece discusses how one person's light or knowledge can illuminate others, and how dictators have tried to suppress this sharing of light but have always ultimately failed. 2) The choric piece is a translation of a Filipino poem lamenting the loss of the Philippines' freedom and demeaning of its culture and language by another power. 3) The storytelling piece tells an Indian fable about four Brahmans, three scholarly but lacking sense and one having only sense, who come upon bones in the forest and use their knowledge to assemble it into a living lion, but the man of sense warns them not to bring it to life for their own safety.

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Gabriel Gonzaga
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843 views3 pages

The Eternal Light: Dr. Jose P. Rizal

1) The oratorical piece discusses how one person's light or knowledge can illuminate others, and how dictators have tried to suppress this sharing of light but have always ultimately failed. 2) The choric piece is a translation of a Filipino poem lamenting the loss of the Philippines' freedom and demeaning of its culture and language by another power. 3) The storytelling piece tells an Indian fable about four Brahmans, three scholarly but lacking sense and one having only sense, who come upon bones in the forest and use their knowledge to assemble it into a living lion, but the man of sense warns them not to bring it to life for their own safety.

Uploaded by

Gabriel Gonzaga
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Oratorical Piece (Grade 8)

The Eternal Light


Dr. Jose P. Rizal
A Candle is a small thing.
But one candle can light one another.
And as it gives its flame to other,
see how its own light increases!
You are such as a light.
Light is the power to dispel darkness.
You have this power to move back the darkness in yourself and in otherswith the birth of light
created when one mind illuminates another, when one heart kindles another, when one man
strengthens another.
And its flame also enlarges within you as you pass on!
Throughout the history, ... Children of Darkness
have tried to smother this passage of light from man to man.
Throughout the history; Dictators, large and small, have tried... to darken, ...to diminish, ...and to separate men by force!
But... always in the end, ... they fail!
For always somewhere in the world the Light remains!
... ready to burn its brightest where it is dark;
... a Light that began when God created the world!
"... Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment..." --Psalm 104
And every free people has remained free!
...free by resisting those who would extinguish in men
... the Light of Freedom, of Love, and of Truth!
To do Our daily part to increase this Light,
We must remember that a candle alone... is a small thing,
a man alone... is a small thing,
and a nation alone... is a very small thing.
Remembering this... ,
We must recognize something much more than our indispensability to others.
We must also remember Their indispensability to us.
For how can we hope-- either as individuals or nations
... to reach our maximum
...'till we help those around us reach theirs?
To be strong, the strong must serve!

Choric Piece (Grade 8)

WHEN YOUR TEARS RUN DRY, MY MOTHERLAND


Filipino original by Amado V. Hernandez, Kung Tuyo na ang Luha Mo, Aking Bayan
Free Verse Translation by Jose Maria Sison
Shed your tears, my motherland: let all your sorrow flow
Over the hapless fate of your hapless soil
The flag that is your symbol is shrouded by the alien flag
Even your inherited language is demeaned by another language;
Thus was the day when you were robbed of freedom
When Manila was seized on the thirteenth of August.
Shed your tears, while they gloatingly celebrate
On the graves of the downtrodden, the magnates are in revelry
You are like Huli, the enslaved debt peon
You are like Sisa, demented by suffering
Without strength to defend, without courage to fight
Wailing while being slaughtered, lamenting while being robbed.
Shed your tears over the heaps of misfortune
That inflict pain on you, that fatten the aliens
All your riches are wantonly squandered
All your freedoms quashed in one fell swoop
Behold your land, an alien army is guarding
Behold your seas, an alien ship is hovering.
Shed your tears if in your heart the purpose has waned
If the sun in your sky is always in twilight
If the waves of the sea have ceased to surge
If the volcanoes in your breast do not rage
If no one stands vigil on the eve of the uprising
Shed, oh shed your tears if your freedom lies in state.
The day will come when your tears run dry
The day will come when tears no longer flow from your swollen eyes
But fire, fire the color of blood
While your blood will be boiling steel
You shall shout with full courage in the flames of a thousand torches
And the old chains you shall destroy with gunfire.

Storytelling Piece (Grade 8)

THE LION-MAKERS
From the Panchatantra
India
In a certain town were four Brahmans who lived in friendship. Three of them had reached the
far shore of scholarship, but lacked sense. The other found scholarship distasteful; he had
nothing but sense.
One day they met for consultation. What is the use of attainments, they said. If one does
not travel, win the favor of kings, and acquire money. Whatever we do, let us all travel.
But when they had gone a little way, the eldest of them said, One of us, the fourth is a
dullard, having nothing but sense. Now nobody gains the favorable attention of kings by sense
without scholarship. Therefore we will not share our earnings with him. Let him turn back and
go home.
Then the second said, My intelligent friend, you lack scholarship. Please go home. But the
third said, No, no. This is no way to behave. For we have played together since we were little
boys. Come along, my noble friend. You shall have a share of the money we will earn.
With this agreement, they continued their journey, and in a forest found the bones of a dead
lion. Thereupon one of them said, A good opportunity to test the ripeness of our scholarship.
Here lies some kind of creature, dead. Let us bring it to life by means of our scholarship we
have honestly won.
Then the first said, I know how to assemble the skeleton. The second said, I can supply skin,
flesh and blood. The third said, I can give it life.
So the first assembled the skeleton, the second provided the skin, flesh and blood. But while
the third was intent on giving the breath of life, the man of sense advised against it, remarking,
This is a lion. If you bring him to life, he will kill every one of us.
You simpleton! said the other. It is not I who will reduce scholarship to a nullity. In that
case, came the reply, wait a moment, while I climb this convenient tree.
And that is why I say:
Scholarship is less than sense;
Senseless scholars in their pride
Made a lion, then they died.

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