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145

Canto the Third. The Magician.

1. Death of Amo's affianced husband. 2. Dirge for a Chief dishonoured by a peaceful death. 3. Amo released from the Tapu (taboo). 4. The Tapu's power and use. 5. Kangapo. 6. Disgusted that the Chief's death will falsify his predictions. 7. Tries new auguries. 8. Gets answers from spirits—how.

I.

Then Amohia's comrade told how he
To Rotorua's Chief of high degree
From Tapu-ae by Taupo's Lake, his home,
A messenger of great sad news was come.
How he by chance upon the other side
Had in her bark the Maid espied,
And she had offered him a cast across.
And then he told the lamentable loss
Of great Te Rehu—Taupo's Chief, to whom
That Maiden, as they knew so well,
From the first promise of her matchless bloom
Had been betrothed and ‘tapu’—It befel
In this wise. Sometime since, continuous rain
Softening a mountain, it had slipped amain
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Down and across a deep ravine and dammed
A running stream, and all its waters jammed
Between the hills, till thus repressed and choked
Into the porous mound they slowly soaked;
And one fine night when all was still and dim,
The saturate mighty mass had burst away,
And rushing down the vale, while fast asleep
Te Rehu and his nearest kindred lay
Least dreaming such a doom, had swallowed him
And them and their whole village in a deep
And stifling yellow mass of fluent clay,
So overwhelming, sudden, viscous, they
Could neither float, nor rise in it nor swim.

II.

Astonished, shocked at such a tale,
At such a death for so renowned a man,
Low murmurs through the crowding hearers ran:
And when the storm had to the hills retreated,
Though still it rumbled, lumbering heavily
In the back chambers of the sky,
With downcast looks in treble circle seated,
And grief, if false yet truly counterfeited,
The summoned clansmen sung their song of wail.
One, standing in the midst the slow sad chaunt began:—
“Death, degrading, mournful, gloomy!
Death unfit for song or story,
Death for a dog—a cur—a slave—
Not for the brave!—”
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And all took up the chorus harsh and strong,
In perfect time discharging groan on groan,
While rolled a distant thunderpeal along
In kindred and scarce deeper tone:
“Death, O Death, how hateful, gloomy!
Death for a dog—a slave—a slave!
Then rose the single voice in prouder strain,
Just as the lightning flashed again:
“Had you died the death of glory
On the field of battle gory,
Died the death a chief would choose,
Not this death so sad and gloomy,—
Then with tuft and tassel plumy,
Down of gannet—sea-king's feather,
Gaily-waving, snowy-flecking,
Every deep-red gunwale decking,—
Then a hundred brave canoes
With elated
Warriors freighted,
Like one man their war-chaunt chiming,
Fierce deep cries the paddles timing,
While the paddles' serried rows
Like broad bird's-wings spread and close,
Through the whitening
Waves like lightning
Had been darting all together,
Forward through the foam together,
All in quest of vengeful slaughter
Tearing through the tortured water!”
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And from the dusky figures seated round,
With savage satisfaction in the sound—
A stern deep pride with sadness shadowed o'er,
Like volleys fired above a soldier's grave,
Rang out the chorussed thundering groans once more:
“Ha! a hundred brave canoes—
Crowding, crashing,
Darting, plashing,
Darting, dashing through the wave!
Forward—forward all together,
All in quest of foemen's slaughter,
They had cleft the foamy water
Seeking vengeance for the brave,
For the brave—the brave—the brave!”

III.

But while with stern staccato notes this song
Of simulated sorrow rolled along,
A genuine gladness cheered one secret breast,
One with a grief as genuine was deprest.
To Amohia 'twas pure joy to be
At length from that detested contract free,
Released from nuptials the reluctant maid
On various pretexts had so long delayed.
For the good Chief could ne'er be reconciled
To use coercion with his darling child,
Who by the dreadful ‘tapu’ firmly bound
Moved—a bright creature, consecrate and crowned,
Inviolate and charmed, to all around.
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IV.

The “tapu” was a fearful spell,
Potent as creeds or guards or gold
The power of Priest and Chieftain to uphold.
The terrors of that ever-present Hell
Outdid the threats of distant ones
That faintly flame in far futurity—
As might the roar of pointed guns
A word would on your body bring to bear,
The noise of thunder in the sky.
And never did despotic cunning plan
A fouler system for enslaving man,
Than this mysterious scheme of fear and hate,
The basis of their savage Church and State.
True, the strange custom had its brighter side
When for good ends resistless 'twas applied:
What could compel the masses to combine
Like it, their labour for each grand design—
The great canoe—the long sea-sweeping seine
Or hall for council where the chiefs convene?
Where could true rights a trustier guard procure,
Corruptless and invincible and sure?
Yet most 'twas used as stonghold and as stay
For the Aristocrats' and Hierarchs' sway;
For though swift-gathering relative and friend
Would prompt upon a culprit's tribe descend
And, plundering by strict rule with much ado,
Avenge each minor breach of this “taboo,”
Yet, let but rank or priesthood be profaned,
A direr doom the wretch who sinned sustained,
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More terrible than dungeons, gibbets, chains,
Material penance, penalties or pains.
No high divinity that hedges kings
Could with this sheltering deviltry compare,
Or forge for tyranny a subtler yoke.
For chief and Priest at will or whim could dower
Sticks—stones—most treasured or most trivial things
With deadliest excommunicative power:
And whoso touched them and the “tapu” broke
Became anathema—accursed and banned—
Infected and infectious; with a pang
Of livelier terror shrunk from—shunned—than e'er
Plague-spotted patient—canine madness—fang
Of rattle-snake or cobra: Fiends were there
To torture them; obedient, at the Chief's command.
The “Wairua,” Spirits of the myriad dead,—
And all the other invisible Spirits dread,
All mystic powers that fill the Earth and Air,
The “Atua,”—waited but a hint from him
To dart into their victim—waste and tear
His stricken vitals, cankering life and limb.
Had not the boldest who from want of heed
Some solemn “tapu” had infringed, been known
When conscious of the sacrilegious deed,
To die outright from horrible fear alone?—
So well these savage Lords had learned
How nature's mystic terror might be turned
To means their own dominion to increase.
Unseen executors of their caprice,
Agents impalpable upheld their cause;
Departed Spirits were their dumb Police,
And Ghosts enforced their lightest Laws.
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V.

But he whose grief was most sincere
The news of that unwonted death to hear,
Was Kangapo the “Tóhunga”—a Priest
And fell Magician famous far and near;
A Thaumaturge regarded with more fear
Than any living or than most deceased.
Men whispered that his very body swarmed
(Crammed as a war-canoe with warriors armed)
With evil spirits rustling thick
As blue-flies buzzing in a wayside corse:
And some more credulous would trembling tell
How when demoniac inspiration quick
And strong, in frenzy and full force
Rushed on him (it was vouched for well)
The grass would wither where his shadow fell;
Or, were the sliding shutter of his door
Just then left open, by the river side,
Such deadly emanations would outpour,
Mere strangers chancing in canoes to glide
Beneath the house, had stiffened there and died.
These tales were Kangapo's delight and pride.
And yet his mien that dread renown belied;
So calm and mild; his eyes deepset and dark
Abstacted still and unobservant seemed;
But those who dared to watch him long would mark
How those dim eyes would on a sudden shift
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And glitter like a lizard's; then again
Fall still and calm; and yet that glance so swift
Seemed quite enough, as rapidly it gleamed,
To single out and give his scheming brain
All they could closely hide as clearly see.
His voice was gentle too, and low, and sweet;
So men compared him to the tutu-tree,
Whose luscious purple clusters hang so free
And tempting, though with hidden seeds replete
That numb with deadly poison all who eat.
And then his pace was stealthy, noiseless, soft,
So that a group of talking people oft
Turned round and found him, none knew how or whence,
Close by them, with his chilling influence:
As that great wingless loathsome locust bare,
That scoops from rotting trees his pithy fare,
With elephantine head and horny jaws
And prickly high-propped legs—is sometimes found
Upon your limbs or clothes, in sluggish pause,
Inside the house; though none upon the ground
Have marked him crawling slow from his retreat,
The fire-logs, when dislodged by growing heat.

VI.

But Kangapo had reason to bewail;
For had he not a hundred times foretold
That should those Western Tribes his tribe assail,
Those famed Waikáto, foemen from of old,
Stout Tangi in the contest should prevail?
And whence derived he confidence to make
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That prophecy so clear, beyond mistake?
'Twas from the doubled strength his tribe he knew
Would gain from an alliance close and true
With the brave borderers of the Central Lake.
And what inducement could be found so strong
To that alliance as the union, long
Desired and schemed for, and as long delayed,
Of Taupo's Chief with this surpassing maid?
But now his plans were cut up, branch and root:
And he must task his plotting wits again
To find some other project to maintain
The safety of his tribe—his own repute.
For if he failed so notably, a stain
Would on his fame indelibly remain.
One thing was clear; he must not lose this lure,
This bait, some splendid Kingfish to secure
Among the Chiefs,—this matchless girl, on whom
Himself, o'ermastered by her beauty's bloom
Had sometimes cast a longing eye, in vain;
For not his utmost art could passage gain
Even to the threshold of her fair regard;
His calm, insidious, slow addresses barred
Their own access: her very flesh would creep
Antipathetic, shrinking to its ward
Instinctive, from his flatteries sly and deep.

VII.

So anxious now his auguries he plied
For some forecast of fate his course to guide.
First, by the solitary shore, he drove
His gods into the ground: each god a stick
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Knobbed with a carved and tattoo'd wooden head,
With fillet round the neck of feathers red;
Then to each idol he attached a string;
And in monotonous accents high and quick
His incantations wild began to sing.
But still the impatient patient Sorcerer strove
With frequent jerks to make it yield a sign
Whence might be drawn an omen of success:
Nor this so difficult as you divine,
Nor need the gift his Atua much distress.
The slightest hint a Priest for answer took;
Let but a grass-green parrakeet alight
To pluck from some wild coffee-bush in sight,
And nibble with his little moving hook,
The scarlet berries; let some kingfisher
Slip darting from the post whose summit grey
He crowned—a piece of it—the live-long day—
Long bill protruding from his shoulders high,
Watching the lake with sleepy-vigilant eye—
Looking so torpid and so loath to stir,
Till that faint silver twinkle he descry;
Let, gold-cuirassed, some hard ichneumon-fly
Drag with fierce efforts to its crevice nigh
A velvet-striped big spider, sore distrest,
Struggling in vain and doomed to be the nest
And food of that wasp-tyrant's worm new-hatched;
Nay, less significant the sign might be
For which the keen-eyed Sorcerer sung and watched;
A passing cloud—a falling leaf—the key
Might offer to unlock the mystery,
Which with his wishes surely would be matched.
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VIII.

Nor could our Augur set his mind at ease
With simple divinations such as these:
And he was almost tempted to invoke
The Spirits of the Dead who sometimes spoke
Through him, the Arch-Magician and Adept;
Half tempted in his own case to accept
Answers his own ventriloquism feigned;
Ready to square his faith to his desire,
And half believe supernal spirits deigned
To prompt his organs and his speech inspire:—
Could nothing, think you, less than mind unsound
Sensation with volition thus confound?—
But this he chose another Priest to try.
So in their midnight haunted chamber they
Summoned the dead, and drank in mournfully
What the faint hollow voices seemed to say;
Now like the nightwind through the crannied roof
In longdrawn whistling whisper sighing by,
Swelling and sinking, near and then aloof;
Now melancholy murmuring underground,
Then dying off up in the starry sky.
Such the success impostors still achieve;
Such Nature's final Nemesis for all
Who teach to others what they half believe,
To keep them fast in Superstition's thrall.
From such a doom dreaming their own reprieve,
Into the pits themselves have dug they fall;
Their own deceptions do themselves deceive.
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