On the afternoon of December 29, 1896, a day before his execution at Bagumbayan, José Rizal received family visitors in his cell in Fort Santiago. As they were leaving, he quietly told his sister Trinidad (in English, so the guards would not understand), that there was “something inside” a small alcohol stove (cocinilla).
Back home, the Rizal women opened the stove and found a folded, unsigned, untitled, undated poem in Spanish — fourteen stanzas of five lines each. Tradition long called the container a “lamp,” but curators and historians note it was in fact a small alcohol stove for warming food. The original manuscript is preserved today by the National Library of the Philippines.
Within months, copies made by the family and friends circulated. In early 1897 in Hong Kong, Mariano Ponce printed the poem with the title “Mi Último Pensamiento.” In 1898, Fr. Mariano Dacanay printed it in the first issue of La Independencia with the title “Ultimo Adiós” — the name by which it is now known.
The poem quickly became a touchstone of Philippine nationalism. In 1902, during debates on U.S. policy in the islands, Congressman Henry A. Cooper recited an English version on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, using the poem to humanize Filipinos before the passage of the Philippine Organic Act.
The original Spanish text
Mi Último Adiós
- Adiós, Patria adorada, región del sol querida,
Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido Edén!
A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,
Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,
También por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien. - En campos de batalla, luchando con delirio,
Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar;
El sitio nada importa, ciprés, laurel o lirio,
Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,
¡Lo mismo es si lo piden la patria y el hogar! - Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora
Y al fin anuncia el día tras lóbrego capuz;
Si grana necesitas para teñir tu aurora,
Vierte la sangre mía, derrámala en buen hora
Y dórela un reflejo de su naciente luz. - Mis sueños cuando apenas muchacho adolescente,
Mis sueños cuando joven ya lleno de vigor,
Fueron el verte un día, joya del mar de oriente,
Secos los negros ojos, alta la tersa frente,
Sin ceño, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor. - Ensueño de mi vida, mi ardiente vivo anhelo,
¡Salud te grita el alma que pronto va a partir!
¡Salud! ¡Ah, que es hermoso caer por darte vuelo,
Morir por darte vida, morir bajo tu cielo,
Y en tu encantada tierra la eternidad dormir! - Si sobre mi sepulcro vieres brotar un día
Entre la espesa yerba sencilla, humilde flor,
Acércala a tus labios y besa al alma mía,
Y sienta yo en mi frente bajo la tumba fría,
De tu ternura el soplo, de tu hálito el calor. - Deja a la luna verme con luz tranquila y suave,
Deja que el alba envíe su resplandor fugaz,
Deja gemir al viento con su murmullo grave,
Y si desciende y posa sobre mi cruz un ave,
Deja que el ave entone su cántico de paz. - Deja que el sol, ardiendo, las lluvias evapore
Y al cielo tornen puras, con mi clamor en pos;
Deja que un ser amigo mi fin temprano llore
Y en las serenas tardes cuando por mí alguien ore,
¡Ora también, oh Patria, por mi descanso a Dios! - Ora por todos cuantos murieron sin ventura,
Por cuantos padecieron tormentos sin igual,
Por nuestras pobres madres que gimen su amargura;
Por huérfanos y viudas, por presos en tortura
¡Y ora por ti que veas tu redención final! - Y cuando en noche oscura se envuelva el cementerio
Y solos sólo muertos queden velando allí,
No turbes su reposo, no turbes el misterio,
Tal vez acordes oigas de cítara o salterio,
¡Soy yo, querida Patria, yo que te canto a ti! - Y cuando ya mi tumba de todos olvidada
No tenga cruz ni piedra que marquen su lugar,
Deja que la are el hombre, la esparza con la azada,
Y mis cenizas, antes que vuelvan a la nada,
El polvo de tu alfombra que vayan a formar. - Entonces nada importa me pongas en olvido.
Tu atmósfera, tu espacio, tus valles cruzaré.
Vibrante y limpia nota seré para tu oído,
Aroma, luz, colores, rumor, canto, gemido,
¡Constante repitiendo la esencia de mi fe! - Mi patria idolatrada, dolor de mis dolores,
Querida Filipinas, oye el postrer adiós.
Ahí te dejo todo, mis padres, mis amores.
Voy donde no hay esclavos, verdugos ni opresores,
Donde la fe no mata, donde el que reina es Dios. - ¡Adiós, padres y hermanos, trozos del alma mía,
Amigos de la infancia en el perdido hogar!
¡Dad gracias que descanso del fatigoso día;
Adiós, dulce extranjera, mi amiga, mi alegría!
¡Adiós, queridos seres, morir es descansar!
An English translation (Charles E. Derbyshire, 1911)
My Last Farewell
- Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress’d,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost. - On the field of battle, ’mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;
The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily white,
Scaffold or open plain, combat or martyrdom’s plight,
’Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country’s need. - I die just when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;
And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,
Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray. - My dreams, when life first opened to me,
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Were to see thy lov’d face, O gem of the Orient sea,
From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;
No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye. - Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,
All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night. - If over my grave some day thou seest grow,
In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below
A breath of thy tenderness, a warmth of thy power. - Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its fleeting light,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if a bird descends on my cross and is seen,
Let the bird sing forth a song of delight. - Let the burning sun the raindrops vaporize,
And with my sighs return pure to the sky;
Let a friend shed tears over my early demise;
And in the still evening a prayer arise,
On the holy hour a prayer to the sky. - Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasured pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried,
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain. - And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around
With only the dead in their vigil to see,
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound—
’T is I, O my country, raising a song unto thee. - And when my grave by all is no more remembered,
With neither cross nor stone to mark its place,
Let it be ploughed by man, with spade be upturned,
That my ashes may carpet earthly space
Before into nothingness at last they are scattered. - Then will oblivion bring to me no care;
Over thy vales and plains I’ll sweep;
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,
With color and light, with song and lament I fare,
Ever repeating the faith that I keep. - My Fatherland ador’d, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e’er on high! - Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Farewell, dear ones, farewell! To die is to rest.
Translator: Charles E. Derbyshire (1911). Public domain. A published Derbyshire text appears in Russell & Rodriguez, The Hero of the Filipinos (Project Gutenberg).
What the poem means
Patriotism as willing sacrifice. Rizal places his own blood in the service of the dawn—“If color is lacking my blood thou shalt take”—casting death not as defeat but as a dye that tints the new day.
Nature as witness and medium. Moon, wind, bird, sun, rain, and flower are enlisted to carry his memory and message; even oblivion cannot erase a love that circulates as “aroma, light, colors, rumor, song.”
A universal, humane nationalism. He prays for widows, orphans, prisoners under torture—not just for “our side.” This compassion softens the martial rhetoric common to 19th-century patriotic verse.
Faith without fanaticism. The closing contrast—“Where faith can never kill”—registers his critique of religious intolerance while affirming a moral order “where he who reigns is God.”
A gentle farewell. The last line—“To die is to rest”—folds martyrdom into repose, consoling those left behind while resolving his own fate with steadiness.
Legacy and afterlives
- Circulation and titles. Family copies seeded the poem’s early spread; Ponce first printed it as Mi Último Pensamiento (Hong Kong, 1897), while Fr. Dacanay published it in La Independencia (Sept. 25, 1898) with the title that endured, Ultimo Adiós.
- Ritual and politics. Rep. Henry A. Cooper’s 1902 reading in the U.S. Congress placed Rizal’s voice inside an imperial debate, helping American audiences confront the humanity of Filipinos.
- Education and public memory. Under the Rizal Law (RA 1425, 1956), students formally study Rizal’s life and writings nationwide, keeping the poem in classrooms and canon. l
- Translations and plaques. The poem has been translated many times; Andrés Bonifacio’s Tagalog “Pahimakas” is commemorated in Fort Santiago in both print and Braille plaques.
- The artifact and the manuscript. The alcohol stove associated with the poem is interpreted at the Museo ni Rizal in Intramuros, while the autograph manuscript (with his compact hand on small sheets) is safeguarded by the National Library of the Philippines, today recognized as a National Cultural Treasure alongside the Noli and Fili manuscripts.
- Preservation drama. The original manuscripts (including Mi Último Adiós) were stolen in 1961 from the National Library and later recovered—an episode that underscored their national importance.
Why it still matters
“Mi Último Adiós” is not only a monument of Spanish-language Philippine literature; it is a compact of citizenship—rooted in love of country yet open-armed to humanity. Its voice is resolute but not vengeful; sacrificial, yet tender to the end. Read in schools, recited in ceremonies, and felt in moments of crisis, the poem remains a living reminder that freedom is a moral project sustained by memory, compassion, and courage.
Notes on versions
You’ll find minor differences in punctuation, capitalization (e.g., “Filipinas”), and wordings across editions and translations. These stem from early hand-copied circulation and editorial practices; the core text and sense remain consistent. For museum/context details on the stove/lamp and early printings, see the sources above.
