Ranolf and Amohia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ranolf and Amohia

A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised

Domett, Alfred (1811-1887)

BOOK THE FIRST. THE SAILOR-STUDENT.

Canto the First. The Sea-boy.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. Will-o'-wisp-chasing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Third. From Wisp to Morass.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Terra Firma.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

Canto the Fifth. Cloud-blowing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. The Shipwreck.

II.

III.

IV.

BOOK THE SECOND. THE SOUTH-SEA VILLAGERS.

Canto the First. The Rescue.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. The ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. A Woodland Jaunt.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fifth. The Legend of Tawhaki.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Sixth. Mythical Cosmogonies.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Seventh. The Captive.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE THIRD. ALL IN A SUMMER NIGHT.

Canto the First. Miroa's Tidings.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Second. The Song-cheered Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. Legends of the Spirit-Land.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Amohia at the Fountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. Silence and Moonlight.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.

II.

III.

IV.

II.

VOLUME II.

BOOK THE FOURTH. A LATTER-DAY EDEN.

Canto the First. Flight of the Lovers.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Canto the Second. Miroa's Story.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Third. Love and Nature luxuriant.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Trees and the Tree-God.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. The Fountain-Terraces.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. A Geyser Yoked.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. English Maidens.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE FIFTH. STILL IN EDEN.

Canto the First. The Haunted Mountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. Sports on the Lake.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Cicada.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. A loving Questioner.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. A cheery Theorist.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Sixth. Love beats Logic.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. An airy Nest.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE SIXTH WAR.

Canto the First. The Beleaguered Fortress.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. War needs Idealizing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Third. The grand Assault.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Fight between ‘Sounding Sea’ and ‘Angry Star.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Love fed by War.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. An old wrong avenged.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

[section]

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. Death of the ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE SEVENTH. SELF-SACRIFICE.

Canto the First. Weariness.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. A sad Resolve.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. Death of the Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fifth. A Vision.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. The Departure.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

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156

Canto the Fourth. A Woodland Jaunt.

1. A new Nausicaa. Poi or ball-play. 2. Ranolf's sudden visit. 3. Tangi's greeting. 4. A party to the mainland. Scenery. 5. Native superstitions. All Nature informed with Spirits. 6. Supernatural Legends. Man's ideas of ‘God’ grow with his growth. 7. Theirs of the rudest kind. Maui: Tinirau and his pet whale: Pitaka the Dragon-slayer: Hatu, the boy stolen by a witch-giantess. 8. Miroa's tale of the ‘Maid-in-the-Moon.’

I.

With merry laughter rang the air
And feminine soft voices sweet;
And acclamations here and there
Of loud delight at skill more rare,
Some happy hit or dexterous feat;
And little shrieks at failing luck,
The baffled aim, the striker struck;
As Amohia on the ground
Amid her damsels, scarlet-crowned
With kowhai-flowers, a lively ring
Playing at ‘poi,’ sent flying round

157

The ornamented ball o'erwound
And worked with vary-coloured threads,
And loosely hung with dangling string
Made fast above their rich-tressed heads—
Fast to a single lightsome yew,
One lone totára-tree that grew
Beneath the hillside rising high
Mid rocks and flowering shrubs. Hard by
A little summer-dwelling peeped
Deep-red, from foliage o'er it heaped
Deep-green and lustrous—trees that bore
In tiny flowers their promised store,
Large berries of autumnal gold.
Verandah-pillars, barge-boards broad,
And balcony and balustrade,
All rough and crusted with a load
Of carved adornment quaint and bold—
Concentric fret or face grotesque
In rich red-ochred arabesque
Relieved with snow-white touches—showed
Gaily against that glittering shade,
The thick karákas' varnished green.
This cheerful cot, when days were hot,
With its interior cool and clean,—
Its floor, for fragrant orange-scent
With faint tawhíri-leaves besprent;
Its roof, and walls, so neatly lined
(Between pilasters white and red)
With tall pale yellow reeds close-laid
And delicately intertwined
And diamond-laced with sable braid

158

Of leaves supplied, when split and dyed,
By that thick-tufted parasite
Which with its fleshy blossom-bracts
The native as a fruit attracts—
This cot was Amo's chief delight:
And now while yet the day was new,
And scarce the sun had dried the dew,
She and her handmaids sported there.
Quick hand and eye they each and all
Displayed, as, arms and shoulders bare
From side to side they whisked the ball:
Nor is much need our lay declare
How she, the Mistress-Maid, in face
And form superb, and waving grace
Of lithe elastic limb, whene'er
The more erratic ball she tossed
Or caught—or proud with easy air
Regained her balance seeming lost,
Outshone them all beyond compare.

II.

But see! at once the game is stopped,
Each mantle, in its ardour dropped,
Snatched quickly up, at once replaced:
In coy confusion, giggling haste,
Up start the girls of lower grade,
As in his sailor-garb arrayed,
Emerging from a neighbouring patch
Of pinky-tasselled milky maize,
A glimpse of Ranolf's form they catch
And, pausing, he the game surveys.

159

But Amohia calmly rose
With courteous mien and gentle pride;
A moment's blush she could not hide,
Within her eyes a moment's light,
Upon their lids a tremor slight,
Alone lent import to the greeting
She gave to him whose image bright
Had left, since that first forest-meeting
Her busy fancy no repose.

The youth had come prepared to stay
With presents and persuasive speech
Results he feared that luckless day
Might lead to; for the violence shown
By his companions to atone:
The ‘Sounding Sea's’ just ire appease,
And heal if such there were, the breach
Between his former friends and these.
But as they scaled the steep ascent
Up to the village rampart-pent,
With high embankments, ditches wide
And fighting-stages fortified;
And passed the crooked entrance made
Through double post and palisade
With crossing withies braced and tied,
The prudent Amo gave her guest
A hint to let the matter rest;
And then he learnt how she had laid
Injunction on her babbling maid
To hold her peace; and strange to tell
The girl had kept the secret well.

160

III.

With blunt good-humoured haughtiness,
A sturdy, proud and easy air
Of sway unquestioned, frank no less,
Did Tangi-Möana declare
In briefest phrase how glad was he
The stranger at his place to see.
And then, the proffered food declined,
To pipes and parley he resigned
Himself, in sunshine while they basked;
And many things it sorely tasked
The hoary chief, the youthful friend,
To illustrate, or comprehend,
Attentive heard, acutely asked;
About the white man's home and land,
Why Ranolf left it, yet so young;—
The tribes he knew—had dwelt among;
The seaward chiefs and what they planned;
Who were their friends and foes—and most
The guns and powder they could boast,
And all the wealth at their command
From ships that trafficked on the coast.

IV.

Their meeting over, Ranolf strolled
About the flat where gardens gay
Bright in the morning sunbeams lay,
With large-leaved roots and basking fruits
That lolled on beds weedfree and clean
As fairies had the gardeners been.

161

Then with the younger folk, a few
By Amo led, and one or two
Most brisk or curious of the old,
Crossed, paddling slow a large canoe,
The gleaming Lake's unrippled floor
To woody Nongotáha's shore,
To wing the hours of sultrier heat
With converse in a cool retreat.
A hillside hollow—its sun-parched
And slippery grass of golden hue,
Green, like the half-ripe orange, grew
Where feathery locust-trees o'erarched
A little plot, an airy spot
Their yellow-blossomed branches laid
In luxury of emerald shade.

There Ranolf flung him down, at rest,
With that expansion of the breast
Exultant—all that unreprest
Abandonment to glad emotion—
So fair a clime, a life so free,
With health and strength and buoyancy
Of spirit in supreme degree,—
And more than all, and all enhancing,
That blooming Child of wood and wild
With shadowy hair and radiant face,
That glossy glancing thing of grace
With eyes in liquid splendour dancing,
Or calm, as if from some high place
Of bliss above this earthly scene
Her soul looked forth with light serene

162

No time could quench, no sorrow dim,—
Might well excite, excuse in him,
A careless castaway of Ocean.

Before him lay no water, say
A hollow Sky inverted—blue,
With flecks of snowy sunlit flue,
And mountains hung in crystal air
With peaks above and peaks below
Responsive,—every feature fair
Reversed, in that transparent glow
Deep mirrored; every ferny spur,
Each puckered slope, and wrinkle sleek
That creased their glossy forest-fur,
Sure at the water's edge to meet
Its upward-running counterfeit,
Exact as roseate streak for streak
Some opened Venus-shell displays,
Bivalve with answering spots and rays.
Far round were seen, o'er thicket green,
By sandy shore, in darksome glen,
Cloud-jets of steam whose snowy gleam,
But that they moved not, you would deem
The smoke of ambushed riflemen;
But peaceful these, nor passed away
For wind or hot refulgent day.
White, bright, and still, o'er wild and wood,
Like new-alighted Sprites they stood,
Pure in the brilliant breathlessness:
For breathless seemed the earth and sky
Real and reflected; none the less
Because at times there wandered by
Over the sun-bathed greenery

163

A soft air, lifting like a sigh
Some tree-fern's fan, as if in sleep
It stirred in the noon-stillness deep,
Then sank in drowsy trance profound;
That faint distress the only sign
Of life o'er all the glorious sweep
Of verdure streaming down the steep.
So hushed the deep noon-glow around,
So splendour-bathed that vault divine,
The atmosphere so subtle-clear
'Twas rapture but to breathe it!—well
Might these have made more sober, staid,
Or pensive souls a moment fear
To break the soft luxurious spell,
The dreamy charm that wrapt the scene,
With utterance even the most serene.

V.

But Life with too much force and heat
In these young hearts impetuous beat
For Silence; so the livelong day
The stream of converse grave or gay
From springs redundant flowed alway.
Their superstitions, legends, lays,
Could endless disquisitions raise;
And our Adventurer, still inclining,
Though neither sad nor very serious,
To all that bore on Man's mysterious
Links with the Life there's no divining—
Learnt how for them, invisible throngs
Of Spirits roamed all visible Space:
All Nature was a human Face—

164

A Sybil with a thousand tongues
And teachings for their priests to trace,
Excite, evoke with charms and songs:
All Matter was all symbol—fraught
With Love and Hate—with Will and Thought.
Within a Man's own frame—without,
Above, below, and all about,
Nothing beyond his will that stirred,—
His limbs in dreaming, beast or bird,
Insect or thing inanimate,
But 'twas oracular of Fate:
The wild bird's song, the wild dog's bark,
Were mystic omens, bright or dark;
A leaf could wave, a breeze could blow
Intelligence of weal or woe;
Let but the wind creep through your lifted hair,
Some God was present there;
And if a rainbow overspanned
A hostile band,
As it to battle rushed,
Already 'twas as good as crushed.

VI.

And then their legends—once again
Recastings from the ancient mould;
Gods, demigods and heroes old
Of giant bulk and dwarfish brain.
Greek, Gothic, Polynesian—all
Primeval races on a train
Of like ideas, conceptions, fall;
Their supernatural Beings still
Are but themselves in ways and will;

165

And still the Superhuman race
Keeps with the human steady pace;
What Man would be—what Man has been,
Through magnifying medium seen
Still makes his God or Gods that grow
With his Soul's growth—its reflex show
By grand Imagination's glass
Dilated; its best thoughts—the mass
Of noblest feelings that exist—
Projected with expanding rays
Upon Eternity's dim haze,
Like Brocken Shadows on the mist.

And was it not so planned to give
Mankind a fit provocative,
At every stage from birth to age,
The best devised to speed the Soul
Towards Adoration's utmost goal?
To guide his infancy and youth,
Too weak to see the summits fair,
Up an ascending mountain-stair
To highest hidden peaks of Truth?
And so Religion's self endow
With that continuous life and glow
Discovery lends, though painful, slow;
That interest ever fresh and warm
Which Science boasts her greatest charm?
Though slow indeed Religion's rise
Even to a glimpse of purer skies;
Though foul and stagnant if you will
The fens and swamps that clog her still.

166

VII.

But here the legendary lore
The stamp of earliest ages bore;
The stories told were wild and rude,
Insipid mostly, pointless, crude:
The simple guile, the childish wile,
With savage deeds of blood and ire,
And treacheries dull for vengeance dire;
Gods, giants, men, all blood-imbrued.
Uncouth the wondrous feats rehearsed,
With lighter fancies interspersed:
Recounted frankly, best and worst,
Since none were met with sneer or scoff:
—How Maui fished these Isles up first,
And Kupé chipped the islets off.
—How Tinirau—vain Chief! the same
Who broad transparent pools outlaid
Of water, which the mirrors made
Where he his beauteous shape surveyed,
Was yet of giant power to tame
The great Leviathan he kept,
A plaything and a pet, who came,
Obedient from his boundless home;
Through sinking hill and swirling trough
Of Ocean, black through snowy foam,
With ponderous swiftness crashing swept,
Whene'er he summoned him by name;
Or rolling over, at a sign
From him, would smash the level brine
Into great clouds of powdery spray,
With thunder-slaps heard miles away.

167

—How Pitaka would noose and draw
Out of Earth's bowels by main strength,
Out of his mountain-dungeon fell,
Like periwinkle from its shell,
The bulkiest time-worn Taniwha;
Undaunted by his tortuous length
Of notched and scaly back—his jaw
Wide yawning, and obscenest maw
With bones and greenstone trinkets filled,
And weapons of his swallowed prey—
Men, women, children, countless killed
By this, of ancient tale and lay
The wingless dragon—rather say
Iguanodon or Lizard vast,
Some caverned monster left the last
Memento of a world bygone
Earth's grinding changes had o'erthrown,
Downliving with still lessening powers
Into this foreign world of ours.
—Then, too, how Márutúa drew
His dragnets round a hostile crew,
The thousand men he snared and slew—
Beguiled to feast upon the strand
And lend their seeming friend a hand
In some great fishing-bout he planned.
—How Hátu-pátu, as he lay
Couched in a rimu-tree one day,
Still as a tufted parasite,
A mere excrescence, not to fright
The birds that would close by alight,
Nor mark his lithe and bending spear

168

Along the branch more near and near
Creep slowly as a thing that grew,
Until with sudden thrust and true
The noiseless weapon pierced them through—
Himself was quite unconscious too,
As thus he lay like one spell-bound,
What long-curved claws were slowly stealing round
The stem—or cautiously withdrew—
Slowly retracted—then again protruded
Amid the leafy shadows playing
Upon the sunny-chequered trunk,
Noiseless as they and unbetraying
The lank and gaunt Witch-giantess
That wholly hid, behind it slunk;
Until he found himself, the watcher,
Grim-clutched, and not the poor fly-catcher;
Then in her cavern-home secluded
Was kept in cruel-kind duresse
To be as best he might, moreover,
That Patu-paere's pet and lover!

VIII.

And next, fair Amo's handmaid—she
Whose gaze of wondering curious glee
Would Ranolf's gestures—looks—pursue,
So pleasant seemed they, strange and new;
Who, if his lively, joyous glance
Alit upon the little maid,
Would start half-back, as if afraid
And half-disposed to run away,

169

With look averted though so gay,
And face half-hidden, and a play
Of giggling blushes, bright and shy;
Then with brown eyes—that all the day
Would else with mirth and mischief dance,
Keeping a sheltering friend close by,
Would snatch a serious look askance,
As quickly turned aside again
Lest she be caught in that assay;—
All with an artless sympathy,
An interest undisguised and plain—
Such fresh unconscious coquetry!
Though little noticed by the rest
Because with fancies of their own,
Thoughts, feelings hitherto unknown,
Too much amused and prepossest;—
This shy and saucy Miroa told,
With fluttering breath, slight-heaving breast,
Looking at any but the guest
To whom her story was addrest—
How merry Rona, reckless, bold,
Wetting one evening in a stream
The leaves to make her oven steam,
Cursed the fair innocent Moon aloud,
Because she hid behind a cloud,
And Rona, when the light was gone,
Struck her foot against a stone;
And how the solemn Moon in anger came
Broadening and reddening down, and wound
Her bright entangling beams around
The affrighted Maid in vain resisting,
Like a vast Cuttlefish around her twisting
A hundred writhing trunks of chilly flame;

170

Then rose with basket, Maid and all,
And fixed them in her amber ball;
“And this is fact for certain—doubt who will,
Wait only till the moon shall fill
Her horns—there's Rona with her basket still!”

“A pretty fancy, pretty one!”
Said Ranolf when the tale was done;
“Come here, my child—let me repay
Your story,—it will suit your hair
This ribbon, though not half so gay,
So beauteous as the wreath you wear.”
And as the laughing girls beside,
Caught, pushed her forward, held her there,
The ribbon round her head he tied,
For some such purpose brought; while she
A-tremble with delighted pride,
With pettish mock reproaches, aimed
At them, not him, seemed, half-ashamed,
Half-angry, struggling to get free.