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, ';How I love you!';

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'er forgetCan anyone please explain to me the meaning of the poem ';to the flowers of heidelberg';?
Dr. Jos茅 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.