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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.
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