Canto the Fifth. The Legend of Tawhaki.
1. Amo tells the Legend of Tawhaki (the second chief Hero-God; Maui
being the first). Creatures of the slime killed by Light. 2. To
Ranolf it typifies Truth destroying superstitious creeds. 3. Hapae,
a skyborn winged damsel, loves and leaves Tawhaki. 4. Seeking her
he ascends to heaven by a spider-thread. Finds her and becomes a
God. 5. Ranolf makes Hapae, Old Philosophy with its Immortal
Hope, to be recovered by Science dealing with the sources of the
physical. 6. Noblest discoveries psychical. 7. What the myth
really indicates.
I.
Then Amohia, tapping Ranolf's arm,
Said, “Listen, Pakeha!”—and with lifted hand,
Rounding—Enchantress-wise
When double soul she throws into a charm—
The solemn archness of her great black eyes,
Deeplighted like a well,
An ancient legend she began to tell
Of one God-hero of the land,
Of which our faithful lay presents
Precisely the main incidents:
Adorning freely everywhere
The better its intents to reach,
The language so condensed and bare,
Those clotted rudiments of speech:
“Once a race, the Pona-turi—in the oozy depths of Ocean,
Fierce, uncouth, in gloomy glory, lived where light is none, nor motion.
More than anything created, Light, their bane, their death, they hated;
So for Night they ever waited ere ashore they seal-like clambered
To their house Manáwa-tanë—their great mansion lofty chambered;
Whence, if e'er a windy Moon had caught them, you would see them hieing
Homeward—sable shapes beneath the crisping silver floating, flying,
Swift as scattered clouds on high their snowy courses gaily plying.
“Young Tawháki, well he knew them—did they not his Father mangle?
Hang his fleshless bones, a scarecrow, ghastly from their roof to dangle?
Keep his Mother too, a slave, each day to give them timely warning
Ere dark Sky from Earth uplifting left the first gold gap of morning?
“Vengeance with his Mother then he plotted. So by daylight hiding
In their houseroof-thatch he couched, his slimy foes' arrival biding.
Darkness comes; they land in swarms; their spacious House they crowd and cumber;
Revel through the midnight reckless; drop at last in weary slumber.
Like the distant Ocean's roaring sinks and swells the mighty snoring.—
Out then steals Tawháki chuckling; long ere day begins to brighten,
Stops up every chink in doorway, window, that could let the light in:
And the snoring goes on roaring; or if any Sleeper yawning
Turned him restless, thinking, ‘Surely it must now be near the dawning,’
Growling, ‘Slave, is daylight breaking? are you watching, are you waking?’
Still the Mother answered blandly, ‘Fear not, I will give you warning—
Sleep, O sleep, my Pona-turi—there are yet no streaks of morning!’
“So the snoring goes on roaring. Now above the mountains dewy,
High the splendour-God careers it—great
Te Ra, the Tama Nui.
Sudden cries Tawháki's Mother, ‘Open doors and windows quickly!
Every stop-gap tear out, clear out! On them pour the sunbeams thickly!’
Through the darksome Mansion—through and through those Sons of Darkness streaming
Flash the spear-flights of the Day-God—deadly-silent—golden-gleaming!
Down they go, the Pona-turi! vain their struggles, yells and fury!
Like dead heaps of fishes stranded by the Storm-spray, gaping—staring—
Stiffened,—so, astonished, helpless, lay they in the sunbeams glaring:
Fast as shrink upon the shelly beach, those tide-left discs of jelly;
Fast as leathery fungus-balls in yellow dust-clouds fuming fly off,
So they shrink, they fade, they wither, so those Imps of Darkness die off!—”
II.
“Manáwa-tanë! ‘breath or life
Of Man’—no doubt; a race at strife
With Light!—were this a German tale,
Not artless Maori, who could fail
To hit its sense, extract its pith,
So pregnant, palpable a Myth!”
Thought Ranolf listening. “Darkness breeds
A swarm of superstitious creeds
That crush Man's Spirit till it bleeds;
His Father—God! yes, him they clearly
A terror make, a scarecrow merely,
High up—unmoved—dry bones or worse
To his abandoned Universe.
His Mother, Earth—her wealth—her worth—
Her schools—thrones—churches—mind and might—
Enslaved so long, set day and night
To warn and war against the Light,—
Free Thought, the beautiful, the bright!
Whose Sons not seldom from their eyes
Shut out, dissemble and disguise
Its full results—half-veil its rays
(Till they shall gather to a blaze?)
And fondly feign they nurse no seeds
Of death to all those narrow creeds.
Howe'er that be, the Sun will soar!
His foes may slumber, rave, or roar—
Yet Dayspring spreads o'er sea and shore;
And now, even now, for all their din,
The killing Light is streaming in!—
But I attend. Bright-Eyes, proceed;
Your Myth seems one who runs may read!”
“Now, of heavenly birth to cheer him—beauteous from those blue dominions,
Hapae came—divine—a damsel—floating down on steady pinions;
Came, a moving moonbeam, nightly lit with Love his chamber brightly:
Till that Spring-time of her bosom flushed out in a baby-blossom.
Infant, it had infant failings. Once the dirt-delighted bantling,
Scornfully Tawháki jeered at. Straightway all the mother mantling
In her heart, her treasure Hapae caught up; to her plumy vesture
Pressed it nestling; then upspringing with reproachful look and gesture,
Sailed off to her skyey mansion, vanished in the blue expansion,
Like an Albatross that slides into the sunset,—whitely fading
With its fixed rare-winking vans, away into the crimson shading.
Only ere she parted, while the lagging Westwind she invited
Flapping her broad wings, a-tiptoe on the mannikin alighted
(Red—its arms on knees akimbo—squat—the gable-apex crowning)
One advice she waved Tawháki, more with grief than anger frowning:
‘If you ever feel the Child and Mother to your heart grow dearer,
Ever wish to follow and to find us, O unkindly sneerer,
And would climb by tree-dropt trailers to the Sky a little nearer,
O remember, leave the loose ones; only take and trust to surely
Such as hung from loftiest treetops, root themselves in earth securely!’
IV.
“Many a moon he mourned—Tawháki. Then he started to discover
Where they grew, those happy creepers, that could help a hapless lover.
Many a moon he roamed—Tawháki. And his heart was sore and weary
When he found himself despondent in a forest grand and dreary;
(Ah! that wildering wildwood—who can tell how dense it was and tangled!)
Where in wanton woody ringlets many a rope of trailers dangled.
Rapt, absorbed in her pursuit, a blind old Crone those creepers tended;
Caught at, groped and felt for any that within her reach descended.
He, an ancestress discerning, ere for counsel he implored her,
Touched her eyes, a charm repeating, and to sight at once restored her.
Then they found a creeper rooted, finely for his purpose suited.
Up he went exultingly, bold-hearted, joyous-eyed, firm-footed.
At the treetop, see! a tiny spiderthread upshooting shiny,
Wavering, viewless half, yet ever held aloft by mere endeavour!
With a beating heart, Tawháki, muttering many an incantation—
Wild with hope so high it takes the very hue of desperation,
Clasps the clue so evanescent; then with yearnings deep, incessant,
Seeing in the vault above him only Hapae's eyes that love him,
Up and up, for ever upward mounts he dauntless—nothing scares him,
Up through azure bright Abysses still that thread in triumph bears him!
Suddenly a sunny grove is round him—cheery people working
At a great Canoe, appear. All day he keeps the thicket, lurking,
Till when balmy Shadow veils them and serenest Sleep assails them,
Stripping off his youthful glory, out he steals, an old Man hoary;
Strikes a few swift strokes, and magic-like the work is ended
Graceful with its lofty stern, with open-circled fretwork splendid,
Lo! the great Canoe completed! To his copse he then retreated;
On another hollowed trunk next night the wonderwork repeated.
—Those Celestials marvelled greatly; yet reflecting in their pleasure
Such a worker were a treasure as a Slave beyond all measure,
Watched and clutched that Old Man wilful—so decrepit yet so skilful,
And to their great Ruler bore him.—O delight! who sits before him?
'Tis his beautiful benign One, 'tis his downy-plumed divine one,
Hapae! will he now deride her or the subtle Elf beside her!—
Kindly greeted, with caresses he the Child allures and presses
To his heart no more to sever. Then, as he flings off for ever
That disguise's dim defilement, Hapae smiles sweet reconcilement;
Swift, the Child they bathe, baptize it, lustral waters o'er it dashing;
And Tawháki—breast and brow sublime insufferably flashing,
Hid in lightnings, as he looks out from the thunder-cloven portals
Of the sky—stands forth confest—a God and one of the Immortals!”
V.
“More myth and deeper”—murmured he
As Amo rose and bid them wait
Her quick return: “But how translate
In German style the mystery?—
Shall Hapae our Urania be?
The ‘meaning not the name’ were she?—
And if Philosophy Divine
Whose radiant features wont to shine
With heavenly splendour, hopes so rare,
To Man's enfranchised Soul resign
Her charms celestial;—if their Child
Hight Science seem at first defiled
With taint its infancy may wear—
Materialism—foul Despair—
Shall he the wondrous birth despise?
Perhaps of those imperial ties
With Reason, free Enlightenment,
That marriage made in heaven, repent—
Until his fair Urania flies
Despondent to her native skies?
No, but from her he cannot sever—
Can ne'er resist the lofty lure
Of those aspiring eyes so pure!
His must she be, to forfeit never,
His hopeful, heavenly One for ever!
But where to seek the Angel flown?—
Can that dark forest overgrown
Be Metaphysics? And the Crone
So watchworn, Kant or Hegel is't?
Some mighty Transcendentalist?
Or some serene Sensationist
With both his blinkers on? content,
Nay proud, with his old-fashioned bent
(Anile, perhaps?) to take and teach
Just what his eyes and hands can reach?—
Well! let the climber cling through all
To truths they call ‘phenomenal,’
Well-rooted in the circle small
Of our preceptions; and ne'er doubt,
That, sown and springing from without,
These parasites upon the Tree
Of shadowy-leaved Humanity,
(Like those depending trailers, sprung
From floating seeds sky-dropt and flung
Upon the bark wherefrom they shoot
And reaching Earth take firmer root)—
These, even these, shall point the way,
The outlet find, some happy day,
By triple-plied deductions, say,
Or if by subtler clue it be,
Some thread of fine analogy,
To regions fair and fertile, where
Undimmed by dense refracting Sense,
Far in the Unapparent shine
Truths and assurances divine
Of God and deathless life confest,
Where the sad Wanderer sore distrest
May glad once more upon the breast
Of his regained Urania rest!—
VI.
“With yet more truth the legend teems.
Man's heaven's a heaven of Work it seems;
Yet though his matchless Art reduce
The World of Matter to his use;
Carve out that grand design, until
Its primal Force start forth compliant,
His Science-Lamp's good Genie-Giant,
Ardent to help him at his will,
Achieve whate'er that will may dare,
To walk the sea or ride the air;
Nay, though his potent patient skill
Work subtler witcheries, stranger still;
Take weeds and turn their downy fluff
To magic mirrors that retain
Whate'er impress of loveliness
May, flitting by, their surface stain;
Take light, and its fine rays unravel
Till they betray the inmost stuff
The stars are made of whence they travel;
Through continents and Ocean-caves
Whisper a lightning-language; yet
Not this alone his nature craves;
All these a loftier race may set
As tasks and triumphs fit for slaves
Who cannot reach a nobler goal
Nor conquer truths that touch the Soul!
VII.
“All fancy this! invention pure;
That credulous complaisant whim
With its foregone conclusions trim
To which no Oracles are dim,
No doting prophecies obscure.
Myths may be construed many ways;
Things take a hundred shapes in haze;
In this world, like as Child and Mother,
Matter and Spirit ape each other,
Into each other shift and run—
(Both, better known, may turn out one)
And type and antitype around
In all things may be feigned or found.
Yet for all this, most true it is,
That savage story strangely rings
With echoes of profoundest things;
Glows with the old celestial yearning;
Nay glimmers with a faint discerning
How nought can stifle or repress
Man's upward tendency—the stress
Towards ampler Being, nothing less
Than high immortal Happiness.”
