DON’T QUIT

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t quit,
Life is queer with its twist and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have won the victor’s cup.
And he learned too late when the light came down
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems to far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seems worst that you must not quit.

ESSENCE OF CADETSHIP

They built your basic character. They mold you for your future role as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, nor to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temperate will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what's next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

CADET’S PRAYER

Grant us, Oh God, that we may worship Thee to the utmost of faith and the limits of truth and suffer us not to fail to see the light of our true religion. Guide us that we may live this life to the fullest in devotion to Thee, in service to humanity and country and in the realization of our true self. Let the light of Thy divine wisdom direct us to a firm resolve to live up at all times to the creeds of our institution and teach us never to fail to measure up to the ideals of the profession we have chosen through life to follow. Make us do or think or say of others that which we want done, or thought, or said of us. Help us to live each day in the passing years in useful efforts that our lives may be spent in accord with the pattern of our creeds -the true, the noble, and the high. Give us that honest purpose in life which seeks fair deal with everyone and spurns all forms of hypocrisy that will enkindle our fighting faith, and smother all seeds of cowardice and fear in our hearts; the loyalty to our principles that places all issues above personal considerations, and shuns compromise with vice and injustice. Strengthen our hearts with fortitude that we may discipline our lives to trail the difficult paths rather than to stray on the easier ways. Teach us to aspire above the levels of common lives. Help us to see all things in their true light that we may guard against the frivolity in the sacred things of life even as we may enjoy in clear laughter its many delights. Teach us to make our play in every game, whether in mere sports or in life's mightier struggles, one where our desire to win is second only to our love of the game itself, where we triumph as considerate victors or lose with grace and a determined will to win. Endow our hearts with kindness that we may sympathize with those who sorrow and suffer; unite us in friendship, with all and help us share the merriment of those with cheerful countenance that we may partake of their joy. All of which we ask with faith to the everlastingness of Thine fount of grace to all men. Amen.

DEFINITION OF BUKAYO

Sir, if the fresh and tender meat of a matured coconut, cleaned and divested of all extraneous materials be grated into fine particles and immersed in the concentrated solution sugar (C12 H22 O11) boiled to the nth degree centigrade, a sticky substance is produced. If the quantity be made into a rectangular brick of a form of a parallelopiped, the volume of which is ABC minus the circumference of the plebe's mouth will result to a Pangasinan's delicacy stored and kept for many days at the back of the locker of the triple-timing, boodle-hungry, tremendously-dehydrated plebe. This, Sir, is bukayo

BEYOND FORGETTING

For a moment I thought I could forget you. For a moment I thought I could still the restlessness in my heart, I thought the past could no longer haunt me – nor hurt me. How wrong I was!
For the past, no matter how distant, is as much a part Of me as life itself. And you are part of that life. You are so much a part of me – of my dreams, my early hopes, my youth, and my ambitions – that in all my tasks I can’t help remembering you. Many
little delights and things remind me of you.
Yes, I came. And would my pride mock my real feelings?
Would the love song, the sweet and lovely smile on your face, be lost among the deepening shadows?
I have wanted to be alone.
I thought I could forget you in silence and in song. And yet I remembered. For who could forget the memory of the once lovely, the once beautiful, the once happy world such as ours?
I came because the song that I kept through the years is waiting to be sung. I cannot sing it without you. The song when sung alone will lose essence of its tune, because you and I had been one.
I wanted this misery to end, because it is part of my restlessness.
Can’t you understand? Can’t you define the depth, and the tenderness of my feelings towards you? Yes, can’t you see how I suffer in this ever darkness without you?
You went away because you mistook my silence for indifference. But silence, my dear, is the language of the heart. How could I essay the intensity of my love when silence speaks a more eloquent tone? But perhaps you didn’t understand.
Remember, I came, because the gnawing loneliness is there and will not be lost until the music is sung, until the poem is hear, until the silence is understood…until you come to me again.

ARE YOU RESIGNING?

Sir, I came from the lands of Kings where everyone can do what he wishes. I hiked the plains of Luzon, hurdled the mountains of Baguio just to reach my precious destination, the Philippine Military Academy. Now I'm here as a plebe, a ducrot to the thirdclassmen, a chicken to the secondclassmen and a good neighbor to the firstclassmen. Now are you resigning? No, Sir, over the dead and rotten body of fourthclassman ___________ Sir!

ABSENCE

ABSENCE

How like a winter hath my absence been From Thee,
the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezing have I felt, what dark-days seen,
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time;
The seeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime
Like widowed wombs after their lord’s decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
For summer and his pleasure wait on Thee;
And though away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ‘tis with so dull a cheer;
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.