Poetry
Fe, esperanza y caridad. ¡Quédate así!
Not translated into English
Tomás Martín Feuillet · 1886
Synopsis
The poem sings of the flower of the Holy Spirit, the white orchid that grows hidden in the depths of the forests of the isthmus and whose calyx offers, the poet says, the perfect symbol of the divine image. The speaker remembers approaching it with reverence from childhood, as an emblem of faith, and relates what he was told: angels guard it at night against the wind, country girls weave garlands of it at dusk, the women of the land wear it at their temple. He also addresses a lady, “pearl of the Pacific”.
Context
The poem appeared in the press of the isthmus, where its author contributed to El Panameño and El Centinela; a copy published online dates it to 1856. Feuillet left some sixty poems without collecting them: his friend Manuel Gamboa gathered them and published them in New York in 1865, three years after his death, under the title Recuerdos biográficos. A widespread reading in Panama holds that the poem was inspired by a woman, and the text does indeed address a lady. The orchid it sings was declared the national flower in 1980.
Who it is for
A short poem, in Spanish, with no published translation, in rhymed verse in the Romantic manner; it helps to have seen the flower and the dove that its heart outlines.
Prizes and reception
Its author's best-known and most popular poem, associated with the flower that has become the emblem of the country.
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