“But O you will arrive there, flowers,
And you will keep perhaps your vivid hues;
But far from your native heroic earth
To which you owe your life and worth,
Your fragrances you will lose!
For fragrance is a spirit that never can forsake
And never forgets the sky that saw its birth”
José Rizal
Filipino poet José Rizal wrote To The Flowers of Heidelberg while studying in Europe, far from his homeland of the Philippines, perhaps relating to book-pressed flowers taken far from their homes. He writes of these flowers losing their fragrance the farther they stray from their home soil, however his enduring legacy as a national hero proves that while distance may lessen a flower’s fragrance, it does not stop its seeds from taking root.
We all keep parts of our history and home with us in the books we carry. While the flowers may lose their scent over time, they are there to remind us that we are here to plant the seeds from those that came before.