Can anyone please explain to me the meaning of the poem "to the flowers of heidelberg"?

To The Flowers Of Heidelberg


Go to my country, go, foreign flowers,


Planted by the traveler on his way,


And there beneath that sky of blue


That over my beloved towers,


Speak for this traveler to say


What faith in his homeland he breathes to you.





Go and say. . . say that when the dawn


First drew your calyx open there


Beside the River Neckar chill,


You saw him standing by you, very still,


Reflecting on the primrose flush you wear.





Say that when the morning light


Her toll of perfume from you wrung,


While playfully she whispered, %26quot;How I love you!%26quot;


He too murmured here above you


Tender love songs in his native tongue.





That when the rising sun the height


Of Kainigsthul in early morn first spies,


And with its tepid light


Is pouring life in valley, wood, and grove,


He greets the sun as it begins to rise,


Which in his native land is blazing straight above.





And tell them of that day he staid


And plucked you from the border of the path,


Amid the ruins of the feudal castle,


By the River Neckar, and in the silvan shade.


Tell them what he told you


As tenderly he took


Your pliant leaves and pressed them in a book,


Where now its well worn pages close enfold you.





Carry, carry, flowers of Rhine,


Love to every love of mine,


Peace to my country and her fertile loam,


Virtue to her women, courage to her men,


Salute those darling ones again,


Who formed the sacred circle of our home.





And when you reach that shore,


Each kiss I press upon you now,


Deposit on the pinions of the wind,


And those I love and honor and adore


Will feel my kisses carried to their brow.





Ah, flowers, you may fare through,


Conserving still, perhaps, your native hue;


Yet, far from Fatherland, heroic loam


To which you owe your life,


The perfume will be gone from you;


For aroma is your soul; it cannot roam


Beyond the skies which saw it born, nor e%26#039;er forget

Can anyone please explain to me the meaning of the poem %26quot;to the flowers of heidelberg%26quot;?
Dr. José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso (1861-1896), martyr and national hero of the Philippines, doctor and gifted poet, spent an important period of his life in and around Heidelberg. He lived here from February 18 to June 1886.





This poem denotes both his love of Heidelberg (and especially the flora), and his intense love and home-sickness for his own country. When he wrote home he sent these flower pressings inside the letters - and his poem relates that with each pressing he kissed it and sent his love with it. He says, however, that the freshness and perfume of the flower will be lost because it has been plucked from its true home ... as has he. And this is how he feels - he needs to be in his own country to be fully alive.



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