Canto the Second. The ‘Sounding Sea.’
1. A great Maori Chieftain; what he prides himself on. 2. Worst
native vices now extinct. 3. Tangi persists in his native faith.
4. A born Leader. 5. A thunderstorm. Amo out on the Lake.
Tangi exorcises the God of Storms. 6. Her return with a
messenger.
I.
A fine old sturdy stalwart stubborn Chief
Was Tangi-Möana, the ‘Sounding Sea’:
Both brave and wise in his degree.
In Council calm, no windy waterspout,
He loved with some bold figure brief,
In words—or blunt symbolic act without—
To clench and quench discussion quietly.
But there so careless of distinction, he
Was a conspicuous, restless, fiery guiding-Star
And rocklike rallying-point in war.
His many merits how shall we repeat?
In all that most adorns a Chief complete.
Highborn—of ancient perfect pedigree,
The carved and saw-notched stick, his family-tree
And roll heraldic, where each tooth expressed
A male progenitor, concisely showed
How still through these his lineage proud had flowed.
For not a single gap confessed
The rank did ever in a female vest,
Since from that blissful Isle divine
Far o'er the azure hyaline—
That sunlit vision seen sublime
Faint glimmering through thick mists of Time,
The cradle of his race, in legends yet
Embalmed, a fond ideal for regret;—
Since from Hawaiki, tempest-driven,
Or roaming restless for a wider home,
Five hundred years ago had come
The mighty Founder of his line,
Commanding (one of those primeval Seven)
His old hereditary grand Canoe.
To all the unkempt Aristocrats around
Who could a better model be
Of all befitting their degree?
For costlier mantles, richer in design,
No chief more carelessly possessed:
None with a choicer feather-crest
Would, when occasion needed it, be crowned;
Had those rare plumes in heir-loom chest preserved
More richly carved, more elegantly curved;
There, with green nephrite pendants safely hid,
Though loose its oval-shaped, oil-darkened lid—
His sole tapu a far securer guard
Than lock and key of craftiest notch and ward.
And none gave ampler feasts—displayed
War-clubs of more transparent jade:
And finer closer spirals of dark blue
Were never seen than in his cheek's tattoo;
Fine as if engine-turned those curves declared
No cost to fee the Artist had been spared;
That many a basket of good maize had made
That craftsman careful how he tapped his blade,
And many a greenstone trinket had been given
To get his chisel-flint so deftly driven.
II.
Now at the time whereof we tell,
The white man's creed—the potent spell
Of civilised communion—had begun
Their work about the borders of the land.
Before that higher light, and influence bland,
As night recedes long ere you see the sun,
The most revolting vices of the race,
(Among ev'n those who never would embrace
The new belief)—child-murder and the feast
That sinks the cannibal below the beast
His better there,—the ghoullike foul disgrace,
Had slunk away abashed and wholly ceased.
As, when you turn upon a sea-creek's shore,
Some limpet-crusted boulder o'er,
The reptile life that swarmed and skulked beneath
So close that nothing there had seemed to breathe—
Sea-centipedes and purple crabs and worms
Threadlike blood-red—and limbless fleshy forms,
Swiftly or slowly—all before the light,
Shrink—wriggle—scuttle sidelong out of sight;
So had those viler vices taken flight.
III.
And Tangi and his tribe thus much had gained,
Those vices lost, but all their gods retained.
A love of change was never fault of his,
And least he fancied such a change as this.
Once when a zealous teacher from the North
The terrors of his creed had thundered forth—
Unfolded with keen zest and kind desire
To save his hearers from so sad a fate,
His pleasant faith in everlasting fire,
And painted all the pangs the damned await—
While horror blanched the cheeks of half the crowd,
Old Tangi roared with laughter long and loud:
That Hell of theirs, he said, might be a place
Wholesome and fitting for the white man's race,
No Maori was half bad enough to be
Doomed to so horrible a destiny:
Had a good Spirit destined for such woe
His children after death, he long ago
Had sent some trusty friend to let them know;
But he for his part would have nought to do
With any Atua, whether false or true,
Who could delight his direst foe to see
The victim of such monstrous cruelty.
And when he learnt what adverse sects prevailed
And how each other's doctrines they assailed,
He held his hand out, with the fingers spread—
“So many ways to heaven you teach,” he said;
“When you have fixed the right one and none doubt it,
'Twill then be time for me to think about it.”
Sometimes indeed when young hardheaded minions
From seaside tribes would urge these new opinions,
Our Chief, for argument was not his forte,
With calm remonstrance tried to cut them short:
What all their ancestors and his believed
Why could not they? that which was good enough
For them, might well content, as he conceived,
Such youngsters;—husky grew his voice and gruff:
“What give up all our good old ways—the charms
And ceremonies practised all our lives
To make our Men all warriors, brave in arms,
Our Women skilful, chaste, industrious wives;—
Give up our wars—war-dances—tauas—taboo,
Whence all our wealth, and power, and fame accrue,
For these new notions! were they all to cease
For this effeminate creed of love and peace!”—
But when the good old Chief found all he felt
So strongly had no power to move or melt
His tough opponents, he the point pursued
No further—but with self-complaisance stout
Closed with that comfort—wherein oft no doubt
Much abler controversialists conclude—
“'Twas self-sufficiency—'twas downright mere
Conceit that would not see a case so clear—
'Twas rage for talk, or love of contradiction,
That would not be convinced”—by his conviction!
And so a hearty heathen he remained,
And those new whimsies quietly disdained;
He fed his Gods and fee'd his priests so well,
What was to him the white Man's heaven or hell?
A Priest himself and half a God or quite,
Did not the elements confess his might?
At least all said so—and if failure wrought
Misgiving, still desire constrained his thought;
The failure proved the counteracting spite
Of rival Gods into collision brought,—
Against his own pretensions argued nought.
Nor wonder this should be; when low and base
Man's notions of a God, and vain and high
Those of himself, as with a barbarous race
And minds uncultured ever is the case,
Men may believe their own divinity:
Manhood and Godhood come so near together
They may be made to mingle and agree
Without much stretch of Faith's or Fancy's tether.
And thus our Chieftain felt; if he excelled
In attributes for which his Gods were held
Divine—might he not be their equal too?
Could he not at his pleasure save or slay,
A Lord of life and death as well as they?
And for those elements—'twas but mistaking
The still unknown and so obscure relations
Between the Spirit mystical outbreaking
Through all the manifold manifestations
Of Nature, and the surer Spirit illuming
His own as mystic Being, and mastery thence,
In pride of his superior excellence,
Over that other phase of Spirit assuming.
IV.
Such was this Tangi—such ‘The Sounding Sea’;
Of form almost gigantic he—
Bull-necked, square-jawed, bold-eyed, firm-lipped, high-browed,
His looks proclaimed his character aloud.
And when he stood forth in full height and pride
In flowing vest of silky flax, undyed,
But crimson-spotted with round knobs of wool,
Black points of cord, alternate, hanging free;
And o'er it, down to the brown ankles bare
A mantle of white wild-dog fur well-dressed,
Its skirt's broad rim tan-hued; his snowy hair
Crowned with a jet-black arching crest
Of hoopoe-feathers stuck upright,
Their tips a crescent of pure white;
And in his hand, to order with or smite,
The greenstone baton broad of war or rule,
Green, smooth and oval as a cactus leaf—
Did he not look, aye, every inch a Chief?
Did not each glance and gesture stamp him then,
Self-heralded a God-made King of Men?
V.
A thunderstorm was sweeping o'er the Lake,
The hills had whitened off in sudden mist
That soon grew leaden-livid; flake on flake
The fine spray smoked along the watery floor—
Till plumb-down rushed the rain's impetuous pour;
A thousand claps of thunder seemed to break
Confusedly all at once—with clattering roar
Tumbled about the air or groaning rolled,
As if some race Titanic storming Heaven
From ponderous unimaginable wains
On rocky grating causeways headlong driven,
Shot crashing mountains on the skyey plains;
Or if the tumult for a moment stopped
You heard the torrent rain how loud it hissed,
As if a hecatomb of bulls at least
Were broiling for some sacrificial feast;
And all about the liquid lightnings dropped
In points like grapestones shaped, of molten gold.
But Tangi, while the tempest raged, was told
That where his daughter might be no one knew—
They feared, upon the Lake in her canoe.
Straightway the stoutest of his clansmen staunch
He sent in search of her their boats to launch;
Then set himself to charm away the Storm;
And it was rare to see the grand old Chief
Now in the haughtiness of fancied power
To cope with Nature in her fiercest hour,
Quick pouring forth wild-ringing chaunt on chaunt
To bid Tawhiri—God of Storms—Avaunt!
Now in a rival storm of rage and grief
Threatening—reproaching—all his stalwart form
Dilating with defiance: outstretched arms
And head thrown back and milk-white fleece of hair,
And bloodshot eyes and dark-blue visage bare
Lit up by fits in the blue lightning's glare!—
So plies he his monotonous rude charms—
So on the Storm his vehement passion vents,
Hoarsely upbraiding the hoarse elements.
VI.
But soon the light Canoe they saw
Come bounding o'er the breaking wave;
There sate, with looks of mingled awe
And wild delight, the Maiden brave!
With rapid change from side to side
A native youth the paddle plied—
A stranger, and his hearty will
Seemed matched with equal strength and skill.
Attentive to his least command
The Maiden grasped with one firm hand
The sheet that held the shortened sail
That strained and tugged beneath the gale,
And with the other strove to bale
Fast as she could the water, still
Threatening the little bark to fill.
Begemmed with spray her dark hair streamed;
Her beauteous cheek no paler seemed
Though rain and spray-drops o'er it teemed,
And all around the lightnings gleamed:
For neither lightning, rain nor spray
Could turn her from her task away.
Still stood the sail and bending mast,
And they the beach were nearing fast.
Then through the waters' boiling strife
The clansmen rushed at risk of life;
A struggling, swimming, diving crowd,
They seized with acclamations loud
The gunwale of the light canoe;
On either side, a dancing row
Of rough black heads now rising through
Now sunk beneath the foamy snow,
With great triumphant shouts they bore
Canoe and Maiden to the shore.
