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.

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

209

BOOK THE THIRD. ALL IN A SUMMER NIGHT.

211

Canto the First. Miroa's Tidings.

1. Amo watching Ranolf's boat. Her song. 2. Indoors weaving; sings again. 3. The ‘Grasshopper a burden.’ 4. Evening; news of another proposed alliance for her. 5. Her revulsion of feeling. 6. Earthquake. 7. A resolve (8) acted upon.

I.

True Love is like a polype cut in twain,
And doubled life will from division gain.

Fond Amohia could not in her pain
Of stifled passion, though she strove, refrain
From stealing sometimes to a lonely spot
Where all before her lay the Lake serene,
And she could see the glimmer of the cot
Her heart divined was Ranolf's: there with mien
Expectant on the mountain-side unseen
In thick red-dusted fern would couch until
From the dim baseline of the opposite hill
A white speck disengaged itself and grew
Into a sail; or sometimes,—for to while
The time when sport was slack or weather bad,
With help from native hands, our sailor-lad
Had fitted up a light canoe

212

With keel, mast, sails, and rudder, too,
And sculls in European style,—
Sometimes a dark spot she descried
With flashing twinkle on each side
That neared and neared till clear in view
The light skiff, in a mode so new,
Its single occupant though backward going
At once with two long paddles rowing,
Came skimming the blue calm, and still
With sharp keel seemed to slit the thin
Glazed surface of the shining Lake
That shrank apart in widening wake
As shrinks beneath the sacrificial knife
Some forest victim's opening skin
Discoated of its fur and warm
From the last pants of its wild woodland life.
There as she sat alone and long,
Like one who murmurs low some potent charm,
In fervid words her love would simmer into song:

1

“Now should He come, whose coming for a while
Will make all Nature smile.
O bless my longing sight,
Dear one! whose presence bright
I hail with more delight,
Than birds the sunrise thrilling through each rapture-ringing cover,
Than trees the spring-time when they glow with gladder green all over!

213

The Sun is dim without thee, dearest,
Joy's self looks sad till thou appearest!—
See, he comes!—O dull, dull Lake!
How canst thou sleep so blue—nor wake—
Nor rise and wreathe with loving spray my own, my darling lover!

2

“O slim white Sail, whose every curve of grace
So fondly now I trace,
Each silver shape you try
Only to charm his eye
Ah, happy Sail! and fly,
Because you know, howe'er you strain, he still is with you steering—
Nay! but you only feel, slight Sail, the faint wind's fickle veering:—
O envied Wind! that hampered never
Might fondly fold my Love for ever
Wholly in one airy kiss;
Yet coldly can renounce such bliss,
And on your disenchanted way go heartlessly careering!

3

“You vapoury columns that from hotsprings rise
(As from my heart such sighs)
So white against the green,
And through the day serene,
Now this, now that way lean,
And easier postures seem to take for silent contemplation,
O why not always turn towards him in speechless admiration!

214

But you, dark Clouds! that grate with thunder
While on the leaden gloss thereunder,
Silvery rings the fishes make
Are glistening, fading on the Lake—
Flash, murky Clouds, O flash elsewhere, your muttered indignation!

4

“O Sail, O Bark, O happy Wind, O Lake,—
All happy for his sake,
Why cannot I too rest
Indifferent, unopprest,
No aching at the breast—
Why not behold a beauteous thing with heedless airy pleasure,
Sleep, sport or speed away like you, untortured by the treasure!—
But I must moan and writhe and languish,
And almost envy in this anguish
The poor fishes, for they die,
But close to him—beneath his eye:—
And death with him to life without, O who its bliss could measure!”

II.

So on the hill would musically moan
The love-sick Maid; but in the house alone
Her songs would take a deeper, sadder tone:—

215

“Tears, tears!—Oh do not trickle down,
Oh sleep within your fount unknown!
Oh rack my heart but rise not, lest
Cold eyes discern you, and divine the rest.

“Oh for some cavern unespied
Whereto I may escape and hide!
Lest my deep love, in my despite
Leap up, and break away into the light!—”

Such was the burden of an ancient lay
Half to herself she murmured as she sat
Apart from her companions one bright day
Making a broidered border for a mat.
From sloping roof to earthen floor
Two staffs were fixed the Maid before;
Upon a line between them strung
Fringe-like the flax-warp loosely hung;
She worked the woof in thread by thread;
Inserting deftly, plaiting, tying
Into the web as on it sped
More coloured threads beside her lying:
Her task without a model plying,
She wove with interchange ornate
Of spaces crimson black and yellow—
Triangular or tesselate,
Responding each one to its fellow—
The silky fibres intricate:

216

Like some Pompeian pavement's old
Mosaic, rich with contrast bold
Of vivid colours, tasteful, true,
The fair design her fancy drew
Beneath her nimble fingers grew.
But ever and anon she stopped,
A thread was tangled, missed, or dropped;—
What but some ill-concealed distress
Could mar such manifest address
With quite unwonted awkwardness?
How could she speed her at her task so trim,
With thoughts so wandering and with eyes so dim?

III.

Then in this fever of despondence, finding
Her restlessness she could no more restrain,
Struggling her mien and movements to compose,
Though scarcely able to refrain
From rushing—out into the air she goes.
She steps into the noon-glare hot and blinding;
But what a gush of gladsome sound
At once assails her!—like the winding
Of tiny watches numberless, all round
Unceasing streams the loud-vibrating hiss
Of gay cicadas in their summer bliss.
O it tormented her—it pained
Her soul, that emulous shrill monotony
Of exultation so persistent and sustained.—
She turns to where the Lake, a mimic sea,

217

The pebbled beach with pleasant murmur laves;
Hastily she hurries onward now,
Now rests as wearily—wearily watching how
Distorted by the heaving crystal, the bright stones
And tremulous streaks between them clear,
Still float up, vanish, reappear
With endless iteration as the little waves
Keep rolling—rolling in. O then she moans
In very impotence to bear
The placid, playful happiness,
The obstinate calm contentment they express
As if in mockery of her despair.
She flings herself upon the grass
With passionate floods of tears:—Alas,
But who can weep away a woe?
Tears for each flood are readier to reflow;
Or if with the worn frame at length
Exhausted, still revive with its reviving strength.

IV.

Now the long splendours of the day were past;
The gorgeous tints of Eve subsiding fast;
The Western hill-tops touched with solemn rays;
Their slopes in chestnut-hued and chocolate haze
Thin-veiled, that melted downwards into gloom
Blue as the ripened plum's white-misted bloom:
While the reflected roseate richness steeping
The East, slunk fading up from lake and shore,
From mountains next, and last the sky, before
The purple gray of shadow upward creeping;
All the flushed sunset sobered into boding awe;—

218

When Miroa, coursing quick from side to side,
Tossing to any one she saw
A merry word her aim to hide,—
With careful show of carelessness—
Her anxious flutter anxious to repress—
Her object to seem objectless—
Came like a quivering flittermouse,
Came darting through the gathering dusk to Amohia's house.

Bursting with news she longs yet fears to tell,
The darkling room she first examines well,
Lest any listener be lurking near;
Then whispers in that Maiden's ear,
How all day 'twixt her father and the priest
The close and covert converse ne'er had ceased;
Till they determined there should be despatched
An embassy to Nápuhi's famous Chief
With offer to bestow her—Amo's hand
Upon his son Pomáre: how, in brief,
She for young Kárepa had watched,
Who to the mission was attached,
Waylaid him on the road and wormed
His secret from him—as she well knew how;—
He teased her with his love so often now!
But had not Kangapo with truth affirmed,
No match more advantageous could be planned
For her—none give her Sire such right to stand,
With unconstrained and equal brow
Proudly amid the proudest of the land?—
This was a marriage,—must she not confess
The priests would all conspire to bless;

219

Aye, raise to frenzy-pitch their rival tune
Of incantations to the Sun, the Moon,
The winds, and all the powers of Earth and Air,
To be propitious to the bridal pair?

V.

Shocked—terrified—the Maiden heard
The tale with obvious truth averred;
She flushed and paled; her blood suspended,
All life seemed fading from her brain;
Then the hot current spirit-stirred,
Back from her strong heart rushed again,
And high she rose above her pain.
Her doubts, her hesitation ended,
This—this—she felt had sealed her doom:
O dread! to-morrow well she knew
Once more she might be made taboo:
And what could break that hideous chain!
The threatened fate she could evade
Only by flight—swift—secret—undelayed!
All the sheet-lightning that had played
In pointless passion round her soul so long,
Condensed by this compulsion strong,
Shot into arrowy purpose, clear against its gloom.

VI.

As through the land when some dread Earthquake thrills,
Shaking the dark foundations of the hills;
Their grating adamantine depths, beneath
The ponderous, unimaginable strain and stress,
Groan shuddering as in pangs of worldwide death;

220

While their long summits stretched against the sky
Rough-edged with trackless forests, to the eye
A double outline take (as when you press
The eyeball); and the beaten roads below
In yellow undulations roll and flow;
And in broad swamps the serried flax-blades lithe,
Convulsed and tortured, rattling, toss and writhe,
As through them sweeps the swift tremendous throe:
Beasts howling run, or trembling, stand and stare,
And birds, as the huge tree-tops swing and rock,
Plunge scared into the more reliable air:—
All Nature wrung with spasm, affrighted reels
Aghast, as if the heavy chariot-wheels
Of the material God Man's infancy
Devised, in very truth were thundering by
In too intolerable majesty:—
Then he who for the first time feels the shock,
Unconscious of its source, unguessing whence
Comes flying o'er him, with oppressive sense
Of irresistible Omnipotence,
That boundless, strange, o'erwhelming influence,
At once remote and in his inmost heart,—
Is troubled most, that, with his staggering start
All the convictions from his birth upgrown,
And customary confidence, o'erthrown,
In Earth's eternal steadfastness, are gone:
Even such a trouble smote in that wild hour
Our Maiden—such revulsion shook her soul,
As o'er her swept that sense of doom—a power
And dire compulsion spurning her control!
All feelings that had been her life-long stay
Seemed from their deepest root-holds wrenched away;
No more could her convulsed, afflicted breast,

221

On childhood's loves or home-affections rest;
Her Being all upheaving seemed to be
Cast loose and drifting towards an unknown Sea;
Her heart's young world uptorn—receding fast,
Far rolled the echoes of the fading Past:—
She stood alone—herself her sole support at last.

VII.

'Tis Night;—the Maiden steals along the shore
How lone the aspect at that hour it wore!
How shelterless from all dread things—so deemed
Her superstition—wherewith Darkness teemed!
All the familiar friendliness of Day,
And all its life and stir, subsided—sunk—
Within that circling fence shut up and shrunk,
Where, snake-like coiled, the sleeping Village lay
Miles distant now its very precincts seemed.
She speeds to where her people use
To leave afloat their red canoes;
A new misfortune! all and each
Are high and dry upon the beach;
The lightest well she knew would prove
Too heavy for her strength to move.
Was she distrusted? her design
Betrayed? she cares not to divine:
Her spirit not a moment falters;
Not once her cheek its colour alters:
As he who desperate only tries
To strike one stroke before he dies,
And hardly wincing, never heeds
Some fresh deep wound as fast he bleeds—

222

So this last stroke the Maid receives;
So with impatient patience shuts,
Though to her heart it keenly cuts,
Her heart against it; if she grieves,
That grief can silently repress
With one sad smile of bitterness,
(The choking at her throat no less)
While to her aim she calmly cleaves.
Shall this defeat her fixed intent?
The Lake her purposed flight prevent?
Her favourite haunt, almost from birth
In many an hour of fearless mirth,
Her life beside it had been spent,
'Twas like her natural element!
With throbbing breast, with lips comprest,
She flings her quick and lighted glance
Determined o'er its dark expanse:
That further shore was distant—dim—
But better death than turning back!
No way but one! yes, she will swim—
Her daring path unaided track
Across that plain so still and black!—
Did not her own great Ancestress
Once swim that Lake in like distress?
Might she not dare and do the same?
Did she not feel as true a flame?—

She keeps before her mind, despite
The spirit-haunted gloom of night
That hid its waters shadowy-bright,
Its daylight image, tempting, dear,
Light blue and beautiful and clear!—

223

She tries in vain to recognize
The rolling mountain-slope where lies
The hut that holds her love—her life;
But as with daylight details rife
She bids the cherished picture rise,
She feels the spell of kindly eyes;
One kindly voice inviting cries;
One living presence sweeps from view
The distance and the darkness too;
Before its thrilling influence driven,
All scruples to the winds are given!
What to her is far or near?
What has she to do with fear!—
Her light dress lightly flung aside—
See! she has dashed into the waters wide!

VIII.

Delicious to her throbbing heart—
Delicious to her fevered brain
Was that cool loving water! Eagerly
She dipped her head, again—again—
As if it could appease the inward smart,
Could charm away the choking pain.

Then fully conscious first she seemed to be
How she had launched upon her lonely way;
As from a dream first perfectly awoke
To all the dangers of her bold essay.
So singling out and noting well
A star, that near the mountain's verge
Obscure and vague, hung just above
The spot as even in darkness she could tell

224

Whence she had seen his boat emerge
So oft, as on her hill-top she would bask
On that forlorn look-out of Love,—
She fixed upon its twinkling spark
Her course to guide, her goal to mark;
Then with a calmer pulse and steadier stroke,
Gave herself up to her adventurous task.

225

Canto the Second. The Song-cheered Swimming.

1. Amo in the Lake. Water-fowl. 2. Song of a damsel eloping in a canoe. River scenery. 3. Rest on a tree-stump half-submerged. 4. Thoughts of her father. Love resistless.

I.

Swim, Amohia, swim!—with strong swift grace she swims;
Lightly in silence cleaves the pathway smooth.
The water's gurgle from her waving limbs,
Only its ripple from her flexile limbs—
Seems less to break than gently soothe
The hush of solemn Silence as she swiftly swims.

And now the cooling lymph more calmly breasting,
She comes upon some wild-fowl resting:
And as soft-plashing she intrudes
Into their glassy open home so wide,
And feels the solemn still impress
Of sweetly-sheltering loneliness—
“Safe in their gleaming solitudes”
She sighs, “each bird with what it loves allied!

226

How well doth for his trusting broods
The Spirit of the Lake provide!”
With startled glance their heads they raise,
One movement quick from side to side,
Then far into the dimness sail
With shrill wild cry and dripping trail.
As each into the still air dashes,
Its level-flapping wing-tips make
Upon the else unruffled Lake
A double row of silver splashes
Spurting a moment in its wake.
She smiles: “Ah, had I wings like you,
Could be so soon love-nestled too!—
Dread Spirit! help me too as well,
Whom no irreverent thoughts compel
Unwillingly to break the spell
Of Silence lone wherein you dwell!”

II.

Lightly along her liquid path she presses;
Nor yet the toil her buoyant frame distresses.
Anon, as patiently she sped,
There came as of itself into her head
An old and simple lay,
She oft had sung in many a happier day,
About a maid her home for love forsaking;
And the recurring rhythm making
The effort of volition less,
And so preventing weariness,—

227

Though scarce a meaning to its phrases linking—
She kept into her spirit drinking
The metre's chime—a kind of rest from thinking;
And steadily aside the crystal waters flinging,
Kept murmuring the old rhyme in time—she had no breath for singing:—

1.

“The freshet is flowing,
But growing quite clear;
The full river flashes
And gurgles and dashes
With tinklings and plashes
How pleasant to hear!
The tiny bright billows
That lately were whirling
So turbid and dun,
Are playfully curling,
And merrily glance as they dance in the Sun!—
To the current confiding
My little canoe,
See! joyously gliding
My course I pursue.
Look! carelessly twirling
The paddle I sit,
The river deciding
Which way we shall flit:
I sit all alone,
No fear have I, none!
For I know to what quarter its waters will run!

228

2.

“And see how, while speeding,
A Maiden unheeding,
Wherever those curling
Crisp billows are leading,—
Never raising a mast or
The light sail unfurling,
But leaving my boat free to float as it will;
The rich breeze comes after
To waft her the faster,
The faster to waft her
To where out of sight
Stands a cottage so bright;
(Ah well do I know it,
Rush-wall and red rafter
And carvings so gay!)
Which oft far away
I have watched half the day,
When the sunbeam would show it
One spot of red light
Beneath the deep-glooming, far-looming blue hill.

3.

“No obstacles stay me,
No dangers delay me!
The streams,—where the river
In summer dividing
In silvery threads,
Slips hurriedly gliding
O'er glittering beds
Of shingle,—all mingled, you nowhere can see!

229

All the rapids wherever
The water ran creaming,
And, flashing and gleaming
From humps and from shoulders
Of obstinate boulders,
Snow-tassels offstreaming
Would flutter and quiver,—
They have vanished—replenished to let me go free!
And the broad yellow spaces
Where lost were all traces
Of the creaming, the flashing,
The streaming, the dashing,
The stir and the strife;
Where you heard not a murmur,
No chatter or churme or
Low musical plaint;
Where the gravel-beds wholly
Concealing it, slowly
The river went oozing
Beneath, and gave life
To a few dainty bosses
Of pallid gray mosses,
Such fragrance diffusing
Delicious and faint;—
They are gone—they have vanished—all banished for me!

4.

“The ranks of green rushes
With their brown knobs of down,

230

Where the stream's overflow
Creeps dimpling and slow,
How gentle their stirring
As softly conferring
They murmur so low!
In a moment 'tis done;
They are still every one!
As they stand in a row
And watch me, I know
Why it is they are so;
I know each green lisper
Fears even a whisper
May show where I go, who the rover must be!
And the louder flax-bushes
With their crowding and crossing
Black stems darkly studded
With blossoms red-blooded—
Their long blades are tossing
As the breeze comes up quicker
(So wantonly spilling
The honeysweet liquor
Their ruddy cups filling);—
Hark! pattering, playing,
They rustle in glee;
And I fancy them saying:
‘O fondly, O fleetly
She flies—never heed her,
For Love is her leader;
And fairly and featly
He steers, who but he!
Then mind her not—hinder not—let her go free!’—

231

And brighter and higher,
Like flames of pale fire,
The great plumes far and wide
Of the sword-grass aspire;
In their grace and their pride
They are all on my side!
See! feather to feather
How bending together
They seem to try whether
My flight they may hide;
‘We know to what meeting,
How blissful a greeting
The runaway fleeting
So fondly would glide;—
Droop thickly—wave quickly—that no one may see!’

5.

“Then, Father, why chide her,
Your darling, your pride, or
Lament at her going
Whatever betide her!
For though your eyes glisten,
O how can she listen—
To such a fond lover the rover has flown!
Unavailing the wailing,
And idle to chide her,
When breezes freshblowing,
When waters quickflowing,
All fair things upgrowing
And waving beside her,
Will but guide and confide her to one heart alone!”

232

Thus, not without a sense forlorn and dreary
How doubtful her own flight and fate
Beside that maiden's, speeding to her mate
With answered love and confidence elate,
Poor Amohia swims till she is weary.

III.

A welcome rest! Above the surface, see,
Projects the stump of a long-sunken tree:
Last remnant of a forest-giant
That once with outflung arms defiant,
With all his green fraternity
Stood shouldering out the dappled sky
On this same spot, and shed around
Noon-twilights where in leafy shade
The golden tremors sparely played;
Or in the echoing hush profound
At intervals the soft quick beats
Of the wild-pigeon's winnowing wing,
Subsiding whisper-like, betrayed
Where high up in his green retreats,
He flitted leisurely at feed.—
The mighty forest like a weed
Has withered—vanished like a dream!
The sky is bare, and everywhere
Above you spreads the empty air,
Around the lonely waters gleam:
Where insects burrowed, hummed and swarmed
The wildfowl dips; and, unalarmed,
In silvery shoals the minnows stream,
Their thousands moving with one will;
Or, lying motionless and still

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On tiny fins self-balancing,
Like spreading arrows shoot away
If any swimming Maiden may
Perchance their crystal-folded slumbers fray.
Such wondrous change can compassed be
By Ru, the Earthquake-God's decree,
Who lifts and lowers the groaning land
As in the hollow of his hand.

To this old timeworn stump unsought
Her slightly devious course had brought
The unconscious Maid, direct and true,
So that perforce it was descried.
She found a footing on its side,
And as a long deep breath she drew,
And firm her panting bosom prest
The filmy weeds that o'er it grew
Light green, and dangling rose and fell,
Listless in the lapping swell
Her swimming left,—her arms she threw
Around it, grateful for the timely rest.
Spontaneous gratefulness—to whom and why?
Wondrous, with no one to be grateful to,
That thus the natural heart should ever fly,
Thus gravitate, as 'twere, if left alone,
To something all unseen, unknown:
That its perennial lights, intense or dwindling,
To bold clear Love and Adoration kindling,
Or dimly down to Fetish fear declining,
Keep pointing to a polestar—nowhere shining!
You pity her—untaught and rude
To know how blind such gratitude;
Who threw away vain thanks because

234

Her own proceedings and intent
Just then fell out coincident
With the fixed working of cast-iron laws;
And so o'erlooked in ignorance
That principle to minds profound
So much more rational and sound,
Her real benefactor—Chance!

IV.

But right the sentiment or wrong,
It was not one to hold her long.
To her deserted Father flew
Her thoughts—his anguish when her clothes they found:
What if his Child, his grey hair's pride were drowned!
Her loss how would he brood upon and rue;
With dim eyes, in the sleepy old canoe,
With pole and hoopnet as he used to do,
Fishing perhaps the long day through;
Unconscious half, in his distress
And heedless of his ill-success.
To think of his despair her bosom bled;
Yet how could they upbraid her that she fled?
Could they, if all were known, bid her contend
Against a fate she could not help nor mend?
Was Love to be resisted? Could they blame her
If that insidious Power o'ercame her?
Because they could not see nor feel
The spell whose tyrannous control
Absorbed, entranced her mind—her soul,
Should they expect she could reject
Its might, her heart against it steel?
As well—(for as her feelings rose,
The oriental fancy, bred

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And born with her, and through all joys and woes
With metaphor and song for ever fed,
At once in quick spontaneous chaunt
Expressing all the moment's want,
Again to Nature's ways and shows
For vindication and example sped)
As well upbraid the feathery clouds of Morning,
Because the unrisen Sun is out of sight,
For not in cold impassive pallor scorning
The first faint touches of his cheering light;
As well expect their snowy fleeces,
As upward from his seahid cave he rushes,
Not to be heart-struck into burning blushes;
Or as he nigher comes and nigher
And the soft-flowing splendour still increases,
Though all his disc be hidden yet,
As well expect the basking brood
No further to drink-in the blissful flood,
But fling it eddying back, nor let
The rosy blushes rapture-kindle into golden fire!
“Ah no!” she thought, while her full bosom heaves
A sigh—“with me no more than these—Ah no,
It cannot be—it never can be so!
Him I was born, compelled to love—I know;
Him I shall love—him ever—till the day
When with thick coronals of freshest leaves
The maids and matrons to my funeral go!”—
In fresh resolve the passing pang she smothers,
And dashes, as it starts, the tear away:
Then with a half impatience and mute pain
She turns into the yielding Lake again;
Again the Lake's mild breast receives her like a Mother's!

236

Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.

1. Amo swimming still. 2. The Starry Heavens. What ideas natural to the vision she missed; 3. And what resultant feelings. Adoration higher than Logic? 4, 5. What she did see and feel. 6. Exhaustion. 7. Land. 8. A warm bath.

I.

Swim, Amohia, swim!—with patient toil she swims,
In solemn silence, night, and loneliness.
Steady the star-reflections, every flake
Like dropping arrows, golden, motionless,
Hang on the shadowy polish of the Lake;
Only the waving of her lithe young limbs
Sets them a little trembling, or bedims
And quenches them, as through their glittering trails she swims.

Once more the Maiden's vigour flags;
Wearily now her languid frame she drags;
So on her back to rest her arms she turns,
And with her feet alone the water slowly spurns.

237

II.

But when at once right o'er her swung
The whole enormous lighted dome of Heaven,
What feelings in her bosom sprung?—

Not fraught indeed for her the glorious vision
With all the myriad miracles 'tis given
Our tutored sight to marvel at therein;
Thickstarred Immensities—O what were fields Elysian—
Softswarded glooms of Paradise
Fire-streaked with glancing lovelit eyes;
Or that pure Empyrean where the bards divine—
Of Albion or the Florentine,
In world-entrancing everliving dreams,
Saw jacinth-downs and topaz-spurting streams
And uplands opaline;
Champaigns of sheeted pearl with rosy-green
Reflections shot, and mildest rainbow-sheen,
Where snowdrifts of blest Angels spread and swarm
And scatter, on the rolling grand Hosanna-storm
Uplifted—floated—borne away!
Or rounded to a snowy world-wide rose
With golden heart where God's own brilliance glows;—
What seem all these to that tremendous scene,
But tinselled stagework—transient—mean—
Poor craft of some mere mortal mechanician!
—Nor could her fancy science-guided stray—
From those bold fires that here and there
Like vanward sentinels low hovering hung,

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Rejoicing in some kingly trust,—
Through an immeasurable array
Of evervarying mingling lights
Pausing in multitudinous troops
On still retiring higher heights
As on some vast celestial palace-stair;
Or poured forth infinite in scattering groups
And endlessly-recurring shoal on shoal;
With luminous depths on all sides leading
To deeper depths that evermore receding
And evermore reopening lose
Themselves in labyrinthine avenues
Of glory unspeakable! a maze
Of vistas intricate that everywhere
Away and upward roll
Into a dimness splendid with a dust
Of Suns—a gleaming haze,
A visible shining cloud
Of specks invisible—all worlds—and all avowed
Only a handbreadth of the outstanding Whole!
O not for her the eternal flood
Of worlds in bloom and worlds in bud;
The lightning-speeded cataract of Creation
Boundless and bounding on for ever;
Chaotic mass or cosmic—brood on brood
Evolving, intermitting never,
To dash and daze the strongest-winged imagination!
Full many a sun-thronged Universe that dwindles
To a tiny film of light,
So far off in the Infinite!
Full many a flying Ocean of bright Mist that kindles
At its deep core eddy-curled
And whirls and thickens to a world;

239

Or at its vasty margin thinning
Drops lagging vapour-belts and luminous rings
That shrink apart, like breaking strings
Of jewels, into moons and satellites,
Fresh-starting on their separate flights,
And on new centres spinning!
—The trailing spawn of Systems vapour-tangled;
And seeded masses of stargrain like roes
Of fishes, so the congregated clusters close—
Ay, golden ovaries of great globes in myriads—all
By distance inconceivable comprest
Into the semblance of a swarming ball
Of pin's-head spiders in their whitewebbed nest:—
—The swallow-swoop of Comets as they flee
In the wild race of revelry;
Each like some mad enamoured Bayadere
That darts from out the throng to where
Sits in full-diamonded pride
Her mighty Rajah awful-eyed,
As if, athirst for his caresses,
To fling herself upon his blazing breast;
But catching as she comes anear
The kingly-chilling glitter of his glance,
Swerves off abashed in full career
Again into the reeling dance!
So, down upon their Sun-God dashing
With sudden shift these couriers swift
Still scour away into Infinitude—off-flashing
With all their hundred million leagues of luminous tresses
Into the fathomless abysses
To make amid the astonished spheres
Their sportive circuit of a thousand years!
Or say, 'twere but the wake they trace

240

Lashing to foam-light as they race
Quiescent force asleep in space—
Still—still they spurn all resting-place!—
—Then all the sensitive Planets as they float,
In their enormous solitudes
Troubled mysteriously—the changeful moods
Reflecting of their kindred most remote;
So delicately alive to and returning
Each faint and far off sister's finest yearning;
In their elastic orbits wheeling
Eternal rounds of sympathetic feeling.—

III.

Not these—not all the vast sublimities that lurk
Within the visible sphere—the o'erpowering whole
Disclosed by the optic tube that dares to thrust
The flaming portals wide asunder
And show the great Enigma at its secret work
So silent—boundless—beautiful, it strikes the Soul
Into hushed tears of awe and ecstasy and wonder!
Yet fires it with impatient thirst to be
Knit somehow nearer,
In vision clearer,
Communion dearer
With the impenetrable mute Mystery
That flings such glories freely all around us
Unsoundable by such a mite as Man;
And yet has left them ours,
And us with partial powers
The mighty surface of the work to scan
And apprehend—not comprehend—a plan;
And feel they need not utterly confound us,

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Nor lay us under ‘Matter's’ loathly ban;
Nor by ‘Necessity's’ cold confines bound us!—
For shut out from the eyes of wiser Sense
That palpable Omnipotence,
And in the flashing face of it descend
To doughtiness of reasoning—where will end
Your task—to what conviction tend?
Will not the dominance of Law all through
And prescient purpose—still accomplished too—
Pronounce in spite of analytic brawl
One Will—one conscious Mind—the cause of all?
Or call it Force, self-causing—if you will—
'Tis Force that infinitely varying, still
Through myriad myriad evolutions ranges;
Into a million simultaneous streams divides;
At once through all without confusion glides;
And keeps their mystic momentary changes
Springing in mutual fitness forth—agreeing
As each the fresh results of all foreseeing:—
What powers has Mind such Force does not possess—
What knowledge proper to self-consciousness?—

But say your reasoning never can extract
From that transcendent overwhelming revelation
Some finite supernatural spirit-fact
That bows and shrinks to petty ‘demonstration,’
And so defies all Logic's undermining,—
Take the completest human Being, combining
With Reason—Reverence and Imagination—
Of Intellect and Feeling all compact;
On him how likeliest will it ever act?—

242

Will it not launch on such a Soul a flood
Of irresistible uplifting inspiration
That spurns at slow deductions, wrong or right,
Too poor for consciousness so vast?—not smite
Into that ampler Soul a rapture bright
Of awe and adoration and delight,
And leave for its ecstatic mood
No outlet, no expression, no relief,
But in one grand conception in whose blaze
Poor Logic withers with her creeping ways;
And stands confessed an attribute
Lower and likelier for the brute,
For things that crawl and things that plod,—
But in one blinding Truth and chief
Of Truths—ne'er to be fathomed—ne'er defined—the feeling, God!

IV.

Well—though there rose not to the Maiden's mind
Such visions with such thoughts entwined,
She could not fail
Awestruck to mark how vast a bed
Of brilliants was above her spread,
As 'twere the sediment and golden grail
By some great Sea of upper Light deposited:
Nor all the finer showers of gems that far away
Fused into fainter light-wreaths lay
Marbling the mournful depths of solemn blue:
Nor how across it all meandering wide
Went a pale, luminous smoke that swarmed

243

With sparks, as from the unseen fires it rose
Of some vast spectral beings that performed
Their unimaginable rites outside:
She wondered too
At those mysterious stains of darkest hue,
Unfathomable shafts of blindest vacancy
Like scathing tracks of Demon dread
Before whose flight the myriad brilliances
Shrank blighted—marred—as shrink and close
Rock-purpling tribes of sea-anemones
Beneath the careless tread
Of one who by the side of Ocean goes.

But shunning all that glorious Company
A falling star—look! swift and furtively
Slides into light a moment, and is gone!
Of all unnoted, noting none;
In stealthy chase (she thought) or bent
On secret mission—but apart, alone—
And utterly absorbed in his unknown intent.

All was so solemn, vast, ethereal, strange—
Complete within its wondrous self—removed
So far from our dark world of chance and change,
From all she hoped, or feared, or loved,
The longer on the scene she dwelt,
More helpless still the maiden felt,
More feeble, specklike, in the gleaming dumb Immensity.

V.

What, though she had been taught to trace
Amid the million throbbing hearts of fire,

244

Ancestral spirits of her race
Whose fame had won them that high place,—
Those steady stars, unwinking, bold,
That well might souls of heroes be,
From them, so proud, and calm, and cold
How could she look for sympathy?
But where were they, so gentle, clear,
Sweet innocent spirits in timid lustres shrined,
Whom oft at twilight she would mark
Come trembling through the melting dark,
As then, then only confident enough
(Like fawns upon the point to turn and fly)
With fluttering heart to hesitate so nigh?—
They must be, sure, of tenderer stuff,—
Have souls that pity could inspire!

Ah, idle seemed the fond desire
Amid the thronging hosts to find
One kindred heart from whom a Maid
Might look for love or hope for any aid!
For if her glance for many moments rested
On any single group of all that sprinkled
The skies, the fancy then her brain infested,
They were tall radiant Figures downward peering
From shining strongholds, high and free
And safe above her, while behind them leering
Still more and more kept crowding in to see,
With eyes that with malicious pleasure twinkled
At her poor puny efforts. And her guide,
Her pilot star could be no more descried;
So by the glorious vision more deprest
Than strengthened by the partial rest,

245

She turns again,
And plies her weary shoulders with increasing pain.

Poor outworn Amohia!—world-abandoned Maid,
Thy brave strong heart is now thine only aid!

VI.

“Ah! if at last I sink—”
It blanched her cheek to think
The thought—her heart a moment ceased to beat—
“Oh might I then on that dear shore be thrown
And by Ranóro found alone!
And if he loved me with a love like mine
Ah, would not even then my bosom own
Some feeble flutter of a joy divine
When frantic he would clasp, the cold, cold form
With vain caresses warm;
No love returned, no answering heat;
Then curse the intolerable light—nor stay—
But dashing out his life in some quick way
While the loathed Universe whirled off his brain,
With fainting fervour strain
Our dead and dying hearts together—never to part again!

But if, as once I think you said,—
Laughing at what I told you of the gloom
And sordid horror of our Reinga dread—
The white man hopes a better doom
For spirits of the dead,
Oh would not mine low hovering for a while,

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Linger for yours, Ranoro! Then, O bliss! to speed
Together to that happier land—
For they would rush together freed,
And wondering with a pensive happy smile
At all the maddening care and heed
That vexed the senseless forms entwined upon the strand.

Nay, live, Ranoro! live—and sometimes give
A thought to your poor—lost—” The bitter tear
Was checked before it reached her eyes;
And that throat-agony forbid to rise:
With resolute will
She bids the unnerving visions disappear;
And the brave Maiden tries
To rally her spent force with thoughts of meeting,
With the deep rapture of Ranoro's greeting.
Alas, though feebly struggling still
With patient anguish on her brow,
Poor gallant Amohia is exhausted now!

VII.

But see! upon the hillside glows,
Unmoving, bright, a sudden light!
Oh joyous sight, 'tis his, she knows!
New hope, new life, new strength she gains;
It feeds her brain with will—with warmth her veins.
And now she is aware how on the right
A mountain spur, as if in friendly guise
Has stolen forward to surprise
And catch—say rather, to embrace her!

247

How high the hills that darkly face her
Have grown! the darkly-branching trees
Are mingling with the stars, she sees:
A kind of gentle stir is in the air;
Faint sounds of life, though life at rest, are there.—
Like an accordion suddenly
Opened and shut by some one nigh,
Two loud harsh notes assail her ear—
The night-hawk's! harsh but yet so near!
She blest them! to her present plight
Seemed never song-bird's notes so dear,
So sweet as that melodious screech
Startling the darkness with delight!
With desperate strokes she presses forward fast—
She feels that they must be her last.
With downthrust foot she strives to reach—
O joy—O bliss!—she feels for and has found,
Can touch that deep salvation—the firm ground!
One stroke—one other yet—a moment more
She staggers, falls—upon the pumice-whitened shore.

VIII.

Cold, shivering, stiff,—with drooping eyes,
Slow-beating pulse and gasping sighs
Long prostrate on the ground she lies.
'Twas the night-chill those Lakes have, ev'n in summer,
More than the distance, that had so o'ercome her.—
But gleaming in the Moon's new-risen beam
She sees not far a little puff of steam;
She struggles towards it slowly—half-alive;
That lucky spring will soon her languid frame revive!

248

It was a sparry basin, smoothly lipped and fringed
With snowy stalactite, just tinged
With a faint delicate flush
Like that white rose, the ‘maiden-blush.’
The water seemed a liquid piece of heaven—so blue—
Of midmost heaven a lonely piece
Laid bare by a slight breach in the summer-fleece;
And look what sparkling crowds of bubbles through
Diaphonous azure, fast and ever
Escaping in the fountain's fever
Are trembling up with timorous haste to greet
And deck with diamond grail the beauteous guest,
As down she sinks into her lucid seat
And in transparent sapphire makes her warm and liquid nest.

249

Canto the Fourth. Legends of the Spirit-Land.

1. Ranolf meanwhile at his hut listens to legends. 2. Patito coming from, and (3) Maui descending to, the Land of Spirits. 4. Ranolf fancies the Realm of Ru, the Earthquake-God. 5. Maui's ill-luck. 6. These myths sprung from Man's hatred of death.

I.

That evening, with a feeling half forlorn,
With him unusual, Ranolf musing sate,
And listened listless to his followers' chat.
It was the hour for sleep; but though outworn
With hunting, now with reckless zest pursued
In his unsatisfied and restless mood,
Little for slumber felt the youth disposed.
Outside their hut beneath the stars reclined,
Or pacing to and fro, he let the Night—
Its soft black-brooding Spirit-wings outspread,
Its myriad-winking eyes of mystic light
Exulting in their secret undisclosed—
Sink down into and soothe his working mind:
“It was so still and breathless,” as he said,
“You almost heard the stars throb.” One by one
His comrades to their mats retired to rest;

250

Till Táreha was with Ranolf left alone,
Who at a legend all his tribe outshone:—
Of many, this was one he told his guest:

II.

1

“Mutára's fame filled all the land; what foeman but would fear
The crashing of his battle-brand—the whirlwind of his spear!
One dread opprest his haughty breast, lest he should die at last
And leave a name some Warrior's fame among the dead surpassed.

2

Far as the Reinga's self erelong—down to those very dead,
Like flames in fern when winds are strong, his widening glory spread;
His sire Patito's heart grew dark; beneath his gloomy frown
His eyes' grim ire flashed lurid fire, to hear of such renown.

3

One eve Mutara chafing strode along the Ocean shore,
While flew the Tempest all abroad—for Peace his heart-strings tore:
Blood-tinged with Sunset struggling through black Storm-clouds branching free,
Came roaring in with splashing din, the boiling hissing Sea!

4

Wind-swept, a waft of sea-birds white went scattering up the sky,
As storm-opprest to rocky rest they staggering strove to fly;

251

For scouring wide, the hollow winds rushed frantic in despair,
And spray-wreaths grand and wreaths of sand tossed their wild arms in air.

5

With firmer foot and dinted heel Mutara onward went,
And clenched his teeth with rage to feel so baffled and besprent.
“Oh, could you take,” he muttered deep, “here, now, a human form,
Soon would we see who'd Master be, O blustering, bullying Storm!”

6

Scarce was the reckless challenge given, before with tenfold wrath
The furious frenzied gusts were driven across his difficult path;
As round him thick fly sands and spray, a Figure looming large
Seems in the drift approaching swift the Challenger to charge.

7

Two lightning gleams shoot through the gloom—O horror! he descries
Fierce-flashing through the whirling clouds, his Father's spectral eyes!
The frantic winds with hollow scream seem sounding in his ear,
“There, boaster, there! see if you dare abide your Father's spear!”

252

8

Aghast—amazed—yet still he raised his lance and forward leapt;
But o'er him black the maddening rack of the whole Tempest swept;
And down the eddying wind hoarse shrieks of laughter rolled in scorn,
As he was left of sense bereft, stretched on the sands forlorn.

9

They found—revived him—sung his praise—the One who with the Dead
Alone had dared to fight unscared! and all our Elders said
That had Mutara won the day on that tempestuous shore,
The Reinga's power and Death's dark hour had conquer'd Man no more.—”

“Death conquer Man no more!—but how succeed
In conquering him!” said Ranolf; “Strike him low
But once, that were the feat of feats indeed!
But had you never hero could o'erthrow
That bugbear—beat that universal Foe?”

“Well, Maui tried it, long enough ago:—

III.

“You have heard, have you not, of great Maui? how he
Lay at first on the flat rocky reefs of the sea,
In that land of our fathers, Hawaiki the blest,
'Mid the vast ropes of weed that in endless unrest

253

Crawl, welter and toss on that surf-snowy plain,
Serpentining in long undulations of pain,
And glistening black, as they writhe in the tide;
Or if haply their monstrous contortions subside,
Still uneasily stirring in comfortless bed;
They are tresses, they say, that Taranga outspread
Round the Infant she left on the sea-shore and fled:—
But those tangles, they dandled in sunshine and storm,
And nurtured and kneaded the Babe into form.
Then scathless to keep him from sea-bird and worm,
The jelly-fish wrapt him all fresh from the brine
In their discs of soft crystal, that streaked with such fine
Radiations of scarlet transparently shine.

So he grew up a Giant; and gave his great days
To glorious deeds and the winning of praise.
The red seeds of fire he was first to discover;
And dared in his longing for light to lean over
The mountainous walls of the uttermost West,
The Sun in his headlong career to arrest:
There in spite of his fast-flashing struggles, he noosed
The far-darting limbs of that Lustre; reduced
The perilous speed of his ruinous race
To a steady, majestic and orderly pace;
And compelled him in warmth and mild splendour to steep
The Isles Maui's hook had first fished from the Deep.

But how small was the worth of his glory and power,
While the monster, black Death, could all Being devour;
And Man who elsewhere could such victories gain,
Of his villainous maw must the victim remain!—
No, if He were unconquered, all conquests were vain.

254

Now Maui had seen how the Sun every night
Sunk wearied and worn from his sky-cresting height;
While a legion of Clouds oft exultingly stood,
Like a crowd of base foemen all stained with his blood,
O'er the dying great Chief as he sunk in the flood:
Yet the Hero next morning, revived and renewed,
Rose in glory again and his journey pursued.
It was down, then, beneath the deep Sea and this Earth
He was steeped in fresh vigour, endowed with new birth.—
Might not Maui descend to this Life-spring and bathe
In its waters, and shake off the scorn and the scathe
Of this tyrant, this Death, and delighted reswathe
His limbs in the glory and gladness of youth
In those mystical depths?—He would try it, in sooth!—
But, to find where those springs of vitality flow
In what ultimate gulfs and abysses below!
Could it be where the Mountains' foundations are laid
In the realm of red Ru, or the Reinga's deep shade?—”

IV.

“The realm of Ru—the Earthquake-God!
More awful realm, i' faith, than e'er was trod
By jinn or gnome must Ru's have been!”
Cried Ranolf—“fancy what a scene!—
What bellowing Caverns measureless and dread—
With rents in thunder running overhead!
Far-seen through low-browed arches glimmering red,
A Sea perpetual agitation frets and churns
To foam, that luridly illumined burns!
Then wide and wider yawn the branching rents
That through the black impending granite spread;

255

And lo! the vast Abyss hurled upward vents
A maddening chaos of all elements—
An infinite ruin of red fire
And flying rocks fire-molten—tumult dire
Of roaring steam and sulphurous blasts and lava seas
And forests of upshooting flame and tower-trunked trees
Of pitchy cloud and sky-hung cinderous canopies—
All the fire-entrails of that cavernous pit
Whirled upwards through one vast volcano-rift!—
'Tis Ru! 'tis Ru! with red wild eyes,
And blazing far-coruscant hair,
And frowns that blacken half their glare,
Outrushing from his burning lair
Into a realm for his disporting fit!—
For see! whene'er the hurricane-drift
Of heaven-outblotting ashes swift
Breaks off, the ensanguined dome of cloud
Seems shattered, frittered to a crowd
Of fragments small of uniform shape and size,
As by some shock that ran at once through all
The shivering Earth and shuddering skies!
See! far and near—see! great and small
His band awakening at his call!
How their volcano-fires appal!
Here, white, intense and awful and half-hid
By upheaved strata, lifted like the lid
Of some enormous, black half-opened tomb
Within whose jaws condensed it glows self-fanned:—
There, shot up silent—sudden—athwart the gloom,
Pillars of ruddy light unmoving stand!
And many a sheaf of vivid flame up-showers,
Crested with scarlet flowers
Of red-hot scoria:—level stripes of gold

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Afar in lakes the Lava sleeps,
Or like a swarm of deadly serpents creeps,
Or down the shaking mountain-steeps
Dashes in crimson cataracts uncontrolled:
And peaks and pinnacles and ridges bold
In fluctuation terrible are rolled,
And rise and sink like sea-waves; underground
A deadened roar goes on for ever with a sound
As if a hundred Giants waking would have risen,
But bumped and thumped their heads against the roof
Of their too-cramping subterranean prison!
A world's artillery crashes near—aloof
Reverberating thunders rumble round
The mountain-filled horizon!—But I stay
Your story—let us hear how Maui found
Down to those life-springs his adventurous way!”

V.

“Well, Maui resolved to descend to the womb
Of original Night—to the kingdom of gloom;
For 'twas there that this water, these life-springs must flow;
And its mouth is beneath the dark tide, as you know,
In the uttermost North, at the end of the land,
Where a rocky long causeway of pinnacles grand
Breaks off mid the waves' ever-restless commotion
Far away in the lonely and limitless Ocean.
So direct to the mouth of that darksome abode
O'er the mountains from summit to summit he strode;
And his legs as he stalked on his wonderful way,
Caught sight of beneath the broad cloud-skirts of gray,
Might have seemed the dim rays, wide aslant, which the Sun
Flings beneath him sometimes ere his bright course be run;

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And his Form when full-seen, swept toweringly by,
Reared aloft like the waterspout whirling on high
In a dark-waving column from Ocean to Sky.
So he strode through the clouds to the terrible pass.

Then, although his vast might had availed, in a mass
To uplift from the Sea the whole rocky-backed Cape—
(As blue in bright distance, long headlands will gape
On a sleek summer morning, warped up from the main,
Like the snout of some monster, just raised from the plain
As he listlessly crawls in slow length from his lair,
And pauses a moment to sniff the cool air)
Yet determined its natural terrors to dare,
Or fearing the road so subverted to miss,
Head foremost he plunged down the pitchblack abyss.

But when great Mother Night, Hínë-Nui-te-Po,
Perceived her inviolate regions below
So profaned, a deep shudder of horror and dread,
Through the cavernous realms of the shadowy Dead,
Round their sombre and silent circumference ran;
That was just as bold Maui his passage began:—
But when still he persists in his daring endeavour
The shudders, the horrors grow wilder than ever!
A more terrible spasm, a desperate shock
Contracts and convulses those portals of rock;
And ere his great head and vast shoulders get through
They cut the gigantic Intruder in two!—
So ended great Maui—so vanished his dream,
And in spite of him Death was left tyrant supreme!”

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VI.

“Well, these are genuine Myths at last,”
Thought Ranolf, “samples from the Past
Of modes men caught at to record
Notions for which they had no word;
So clothed, unable to abstract,
Emotions deep in fancied fact;
To else unutterable thought
Imaginative utterance brought.
These myths expressed (to souls—untaught
Thought from some Mind that thought—to part,
And feeling from some feeling Heart),
How futile every effort still
To fathom Death's mysterious ill;
How of all phantoms of Despair
Frowns one, no noble heart can bear,
A ghastly horror, nothing less,
Beyond relief, without redress,
The Nightmare of pure Nothingness:
How hateful, spite of all endeavour,
How utterly repugnant ever,
No tongue can tell to what degree,
It is to Being not to Be.
Aye! none the less for that mad scheme,
The Buddhists' nihilistic dream,
Spurned by the masses wholly,—since
Ev'n he—its life-sick Founder-Prince,
(If e'er the tenet was his own,
Not Kás-yapa his friend's alone)
Was forced in self-despite to teach,
A million ages' high persistence

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In virtue must elapse, ere each
Or any could attain—evince
Capacity for non-existence—
Mere power of soul-extinction reach.
These wiser Savages at least were true
To one grand Instinct—somehow felt and knew
Nothing but conscious individual life—
No ‘mingling with the visible Universe’
Or ‘painless sleep for ever’—worse than pain—
Will satisfy the everlasting strife
That must be waged without it; what a curse,
A mockery this Existence (if no worse)
Did future Nothingness for Man remain;
The highest feelings, then, he can attain,
The best delights, but traps and lures would be
To cheat him into madder misery.”

260

Canto the Fifth. Amohia at the Fountain.

1. A child from the hut goes for water to the fountain. 2. Amo hiding sings a song. 3. Its meaning. 4. Child, frightened, reports a Native ‘Fairy’ at the well. 5. Ranolf goes out to see, musing on ‘Spirits.’

I.

The night wore on; his friends were gone;
Still Ranolf paced and mused alone.
It chanced, a little lad who slept
In his men's hut that evening—come
For change' sake from his neighbouring home—
Felt thirsty; from his mattings crept,
The yellow calabash to find,
Which, hollowed out, a hardened rind,
Was mostly full of water kept.
'Twas empty: looking out, “'Tis light
(He thought) almost as day:”—so quite
Forgot his native fear of Night,

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And to the spring beneath the hill
Set off his calabash to fill.

II.

The spring was close beside the path
To that quick-bubbling crystal bath
Where Amohia rested; she
Could in the moonlit distance see
The cot and its karaka-tree,
And Ranolf now emerge, so clear,
Now in its shadow disappear.
And she had marked the little lad
Set off her way with heart how glad;
And when he neared her bright retreat,
That heart with high expectance beat.

Hard-by there grew in snowy bloom
Thickets of aromatic broom;
Within whose green impervious screen,
Stand but a yard, she ne'er were seen.
Into the copse she quickly slipped,
Three steps from where the fountain dripped.
There, breathless, stirless, on the watch,
She formed her little scheme—until
The thirsty lad had drunk his fill,
And held his calabash to catch
The water of the trickling spring.
Then in a warbling voice, low sweet and wild,
That intertwined with its harmonious plash,
The hidden Girl began to sing

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A ditty to the startled Child
About a “fountain” and “a calabash:”

1.

“Golden water! golden water!
Flowing freely, flowing ever,
Flowing since the World began;
What shall we pour it in—
Heedfully store it in?—
If your calabash be not quite clean—if any foulness begrime or besmutch it,
Oh you never will catch the clear rillet—it will shrink away as you touch it!

2.

“Golden water! golden water!
Flowing coyly, dried up never
Since Tumátau moulded Man;
Flowing so tamelessly,
Seeming so aimlessly!—
Would you catch it with hands unsteady, or a heart with passion fretted?
Would you guide it in spouts of flax-leaf as you please?—Oh, you'll only get wetted!”—

The Child, at first too terrified
Even to run away, stood there
Holding the calabash in air,
With cheeks all blanched—mouth gaping wide,
And eyes outstarting; reassured
A little now, he seemed to gain
Some heart to list the simple strain;

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But 'twas the voice that most allured,
And most his confidence secured.
Had not the Maid been ever known
And loved for that melodious tone?
And was it not at birth instilled,
That voice like Music? when they killed
In numbers at her name-day feast,
The Korimáko, sweetest bird
Of all that are in forest heard?
That so, with prayers of chanting priest,
The spirit of their sweetness might
Upon the happy Child alight,
And her maturing accents be
Unmatched for kindred melody?—
So, doubtful if to run or stay,
He stood—while she resumed her lay:

3.

“Crystal water! crystal water!
Glistening out, then disappearing;
Blinding those who wink and blink:
How to get near it, then?—
Forward, ne'er fear it, then!
Sharp eye and free step—no crawling or creeping sideways like a shellfish—
All else like an innocent Child—confiding—straightforward—unselfish!

4.

“Crystal water! crystal water!
Chilling often, often cheering,

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Numbing those who cease to drink:
How can we use it well?—
Drink and diffuse it well!
If in finely carved cisterns you try to enclose it securely—
Tiny monsters will breed there and wriggle—it will stagnate impurely.

5.

“Diamond water! diamond water!
Warbling to all tribes and ages,
Welling near us yet apart:
Who is it guards it so?
Watches and wards it so?—
If you fear any Spirit too much, you'll ne'er see it though flowing close by you—
But revere you no Spirit at all?—what you drink will but petrify you.

6.

“Diamond water! diamond water!
With still, lucent eye of Sages,
But with Childhood's open heart;
So may you light on it,
Thrive and grow bright on it!”—
Here Amohia from the thicket springing
Whisked from his hand the flask it clung to, singing.

“Though your calabash be battered, bruised,—yet fear not you to fill it,—
For the better 'twill hold, the fresher keep, this flitting, magical rillet.”

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III.

—This was a song, in fact, by Ranolf made
And turned to Maori to assay
His skill, and see how far would reach
Or be constrained, the native speech;
When sport was slack one summer day,
As ambushed in tall reeds he lay
Just in the wary wild-duck's way;—
While thinking by what wonder it befel,
And with what natural supernatural aid,
The mighty Stream—the fluent race of Man,
Since first its mystic course began,
Even while in foam and turbulence it ran
Adown those ancient faintly-glimmering slopes,
The shadowy-lit Himálayas of old Time,
Had still been fed from age to age
With springs of Spiritual Truth sublime;
Rillets and runnels of immortal Hopes:
Some crystal Soul of saint or sage
For the great river timeously supplied;
Slipping, as 'twere, from any side,
Into its clouded and tumultuous tide:—
And how above, around us, and below
Those myriad-branching rivulets may flow
Capriciously, it seems, yet ever feeding
The heart of Man when most 'tis needing:—
Then all the evil that proceeds
From dams and dykes of narrow Creeds;—
Last how to enter that coy shadowy ground,
And the pure runnel's bright arrival wait;

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Or in what spirit penetrate
Up to the airhung crevices of snow,
Or thicket-stifled gorges, dense, profound,
Where those divinest Wellsprings may abound.—

Well, but this Song, a glimpse, a hint,
An impress from Reflection's mint
Struck faintly of a theme so vast—
Of a wide bee-eyed truth one tiny facet
With nothing but simplicity to grace it—
The fancy of the native girls had caught
(Who only of its literal meaning thought)
And Amohia's self had reached at last.

IV.

But that slight gesture of the Maid
Which tossed the calabash away,
Renewed the fears her song allayed;
No gift had bribed the Child to stay.
To Ranolf's side he scampered back
Aghast, agape with fright—Alack!
There was a Spirit at the well,
A Pátu-páere! he could tell
That voice so sweet—that form so fair,
Those eyes, with such a dancing glare!—
Rebuked, cross-questioned, coaxed or jeered,
Still to his tale the lad adhered.
So Ranolf, as he could not sleep,
And must perforce a vigil keep,
Strolled to the Spring himself to see
What might this wondrous Spirit be.

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V.

“Spirits—still Spirits!—strange that every race
Of Man,” thought Ranolf as he went,
“Still on that fixed idea is bent,
That in some fashion, form, or place,
Spirit without Matter can and does exist:
Yet to its source whene'er we trace
Some record of its presence, sent
Without a bodily environment,
The ‘proof’ (so-called) is always missed.
What then?—Is Matter's self much better off?
Prove its appearance unallied
With Spirit, if you can. Sure, Reason's pride
Should spurn the refuge of a scoff,
When Matter's very being is denied,
And bring us proof. Probe Matter to the last,
Nothing but active Spirit will be found:
Aye, all we see and hear, the glorious round
Of our sensations has no other ground;
Only their sequence stands so fixed and fast;
In such unchanged alliance are they passed
Before us by the Master-Showman's hand.—
All Ghosts and Apparitions here we stand!
And for your vulgar ‘Ghosts’ indeed
'Tis breach of sequence only that we need
Produce—no more; prove shadows may succeed
Each other in a series yet to law
Unknown; find but a single certain flaw
Or falter in the dream-procession grand.
An easy task, 'twould seem! And yet 'tis true
'Tis that—that merely—there are none can do!”

268

Canto the Sixth. Silence and Moonlight.

1. Ranolf can find no one. Silence. Moonlight. 2. A lizard and a mantis watching. 3. Sudden sense of the phenomenal character of things visible, and consciousness of the Spiritual and Real. 4. What is this Soul in Nature?—5. Returning, his hand touched. 6. A vision.

I.

So Ranolf musing, down the hill
Had sauntered to the trickling rill.
There, all save its low plash was still;
Only a movement caught his eye
Scarce visible, as he drew nigh
The thicket dense that grew thereby;
Only a bough's-top in the brake
Did for a single moment shake.
He pushed straight towards it through the broom;
But finding nothing in the gloom,
Came out upon the open Lake.

Still all was lonely—silent—bright;
Only himself and living light!—

He followed where the pathway wound
Beneath the cliffs, with many a turn

269

Round buttressed steep, projecting mound,
And waterscarped low spur tree-crowned,
Or rocky—bare of bush or fern.

One of these last he just had passed:—
Beyond it lay in deepest shade
A dense ravine's mouth, which had made
With clustered shrubs a safe retreat
For foemen of pursuit afraid.
He paused:—could mark no trace of feet,
No sign of life—before—around;
Saw nothing move—heard not a sound—
But keenly gazed into the gloom profound.

No sound, indeed, no motion. All in tune
With speaking Silence. Even the Moon
Lulled in the lap of Heaven serene
Lay back—albeit with watchful mien.
Transfigured by her flooding rays
To airy cloud, the Mountains blue
Up to their floating goddess threw
A rapt and meditative gaze.

II.

Upon the moonlit fractured rock beside him,
With not a rustle that the ear would strike,
A rapid-wriggling Lizard lightning-like
Leapt into stoniest stillness. In the dark,
Only a steady diamond spark
Told where it watching stood and sidelong eyed him.

270

“How well,” he thought, “these creatures suit,
How well uphold their ill-repute;
By all these natives held in dread,
Because informed by Spirits of the dead.”

In the full stream of light,
Close to his cheek, projecting on his right,
His glance was resting on a bright green sprig
Of broom-like myrtle.—As he looked, it grew
To something that was watching too.
A span-long Phasmid then he knew,
Stretching its forelimbs like a branching twig
In air, and motionless as death—
Save that it swayed its frail form to and fro
Gently, as in a soft wind's dying breath,
And then subsided slow
To rigid stillness. There,
Its forelimbs still outstretched in air,
With startling faith in its weird wondrous trick
Of aping lower life, the animated Stick
In watchful mood
Close to his cheek unmoving stood.

III.

Suspense how fixed and strange—
Dumb witchery of magic change!
Swift spritelike life to seeming death—and seeming
Inanimate life to deathlike animation—
The real and seeming seemed to waver, reel, and mingle!
“One of those flashes for a moment gleaming,”
Such our self-watching watcher's meditation—

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“When o'er the Soul the thought will pass,
‘Is it illusion then, this whole Creation,
This outward Universe, a breath on glass?’—
One of those pauses in the rush
Of Life's phantasmagoric dreaming,
When in the hush,
The Spiritual speaks in vivid hints that tingle
Through our material framework, listening vigilant;
And as the deep-sea plummet, Consciousness,
Strikes soundings on the eternal adamant
Beneath the visionary Ocean
Whereon our frail barks ever forward press,
And rock and nod
With such unquiet motion,—
Lo! the revealing veil of God
Called Nature—as transpierced by darkling light
Divine—imprisoned splendour—on the fret
To escape for all her cunning might,
Emits keen sparkles in her own despite;
And seems one moment almost to forget
Her tantalizing trust, her mystic high vocation;
Seems for a thrilling moment, just about
To turn transparent wholly, and to let
Her awful Secret out.”

The conscious Silence seemed to win
Its way across the fleshly dross
To some responsive sense akin
His own deep soul within;
As in the shadowy river pool
Below the rapids, still and full,
Two floating globules nearing run
Together into one.

272

And now a little breath of air,
That had, it seemed, been lurking there,
Itself the moonlit calm enjoying,
Along the white bright-shadowy cliffs behind him,
Stealing as if glad to find him,
Came creeping through his hair and with its clusters toying;
Then passed—and left the lonely shore,
Hushed and breathless as before.

Again the haunting shy mistrust
Of Nature's simplest doings thrust
Its coy suggestive self between
The sensuous impress on his brain
And the conclusion, else so plain,
Of what it was, might be or mean.
Almost he could have held it true,
That fancy of the land he knew,
The creeping breeze must be a Spirit too
He dallied with the whim awhile;
Then with a musing smile,
His idle quest renounced as vain,
Turned his cottage to regain.

IV.

“What is there,” he thought, “in the scene, in the hour,
The moonlight—the silence—that tempts us to dower
All Nature thus with spiritual power?
Can it be that their magical influence
But awakes in ourselves a keener sense
Of some mysterious manifold chain—
The myriad channels that may knit
Magnetic currents of the brain,

273

Or subtler filaments more fit,
Along which Thought and Feeling flit,
To those that permeate Air and Earth
And all things that from these have birth?
Linking in one consentient whole
All Nature to each living Soul;
And opening for each Soul again
Subtle ways of intercourse
With every other, near, aloof;
An infinite web of spiritual force,
An universal warp-and-woof
Of Sympathy; though yet but rare
The minds whereby, the moments when,
The mystic threads and what they bear
(Like gossamers fine in autumn air
That softly undulate, float, and run,
Viewless but where they catch the sun)
Are brought within the conscious ken?”

V.

Slowly, and with looks downbent,
On such wayward thoughts intent,
By the rocky path he went.
Suddenly a hand is thrown
Lightly, softly on his own.
Lightly as rosy apple-bloom
Comes twirling to the orchard-grass,
When April winds that gaily pass
Kiss it away to its sunny doom.
So softly o'er his fingers flew
That timid playful pressure too—
The velvet plumage, all aglow
With jetty black and violet blue,

274

Of the crimson-billed porphyrio,
That jerking struts among the cool
Thick rushes by their rust-red pool—
Felt never more soft, more downy-smooth.
Quickly turned the startled youth,
And the sight that met his eyes
Brightened them with glad surprise.

VI.

There was a deeply scooped recess
In the rock-side's ruggedness,
Hollow and arching: you discern
Through the moon-illumined gloom,
Mantling it above, below,
Wondrous work of Nature's loom—
Delicate broidery like a bride's—
Traceried wealth of many a fern.
Some are filmy-fine and soaking wet,
By the ever-oozing lymph
Matted to its dripping sides;
Some are thatch-like thick-layered—some plume-like and free;
Some like fingers outspread, that caressing and fond
Would clutch at all comers whoever they be;
Some soft, silver-woven, down-pointing and broad,
Like Seraphim's wings when their eyes they would shade
From the shock of that Robe-Skirt's ineffable load
Of splendour that else the high heavens dismayed!
But finger-like, feather-like, wing-like,—each frond
(As by daylight the curious eye might see!)

275

Bedropt and bestudded and thickly beset
With intricate, daintiest fancy-freaks
Of golden spots and russet streaks.
More gracefully draperied niche never yet
Enshrined the pure graces of goddess or nymph;
And rarely has Goddess or Wood-nymph been
With statelier graces endued than were seen
In the Maiden who stood in that alcove so green!

276

Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.

1. Venus Anadyomene. A simile. 2. Amo in the moonlit grotto. 3. Her address. 4. Ecstasy speechless. 5. Native espousals. Ranolf's murmured Song.

I.

In days when Nature—ere discharmed—
Undeified by Science—swarmed
With bright Divinities akin
To the energies terrific
In her wilder phases working,
Or in genial ferment lurking
Mystic, magical, within,
Slumbering in her blissful breast
In daimoniac delitescence;
Till with fervour too intense
They would quicken and condense
And kindle into visible presence
And vitality specific,
Glowing on the too imprest
Keen sense in Shapes, appalling, grand
Grotesque or graceful—Phantoms haunting
And to human beauty moulding,
For quick-fancied Faith's beholding,
(Till all Earth was holy ground)
All the still-eyed Soul that broods

277

In wide wind-whispering solitudes—
Each cloudchase chequering sea and land—
Moon-shadows—sunny silences—
Lone mists on fire in glens profound—
Old half-lit trunks of twisted trees—
And stealthy gleams in gloomy woods;—
In those old days what dearer dreaming
Than the Vision such deep feeling,
Instantaneously revealing
Traits of rare resemblance, fashioned
Out of things so diverse-seeming,
Ocean-foam and Love impassioned,—
As it flashed in pictured splendour
On the fine Ephesian brain?—
Will devotion true and tender
Ever at that shrine be wanting?
Ever poet's heart refrain
From a chance to touch again
That wan sweet faith and form enchanting—
Sweetest myth of all the train?
Of all the mystic Shapes and mighty,
Sovran, while Love's passionate pain
Can the senses charm and chain,—
That dream divine of Aphrodite
Freshly risen from the main?

Lo! upon the amber sands,
Brilliant throbbing Apparition—
As if poised in air she stands!
Proudly conscious, frankly smiling,
Sure of homage, love, submission;
Mostly triumph—some surprise,
In the dangerous innocent eyes,

278

Where, what witchery world-beguiling
Lies in childlike archness hid!
Where the sense grows faint to mark
How the purple depths that glow
Like the velvet-petalled pansy, show
Dark—almost too lovely-dark—
Too like a stain almost,—amid
All that gleam of snowy brightness,
All her form's effulgent whiteness!
While the dazzling flood of tresses
Ripples like gold lines of light
In a hanging waterfall,
When you look from the curved rock-wall
Behind it, through its crystal pall;
Wavy sunbeams whence she presses
With those rosy-tipped fair fingers
Every diamond-drop that lingers
Lovingly in their bright recesses.

So was seen the Foam-born standing—
So for ever standeth she
In enamoured memory—
Darling Anadyomene!
While the leopard-sleek and fawning Sea
Round her plays caressingly,
Plays in many a broad festoon
Of foam-flowers—many a sliding sheet
Lovely-creaming, long-expanding,
Then dying off in a luxurious swoon;—
As if Poseidon love-beguiled,
To beguile, attract, adore her,
Ere he stood confest before her,
Mocked the playful gambols mild

279

Of some creature of the wild;
And one sweet look to deserve,
But one look so killing-sweet,
Kept the simple wile repeating,
Stealing swiftly, curve on curve,
Bounding forward and retreating,
Cowering, crouching at her feet!

II.

Like and unlike—such counterpart
And contrast to that deathless dream of Art,
As gay glad Sunrise when it breaks
In splendour-smitten mist and sparkling dew,
To all the deep-impurpled tenderness
Of soft-illumined Sunset makes,
Though both impress
Their varying glories on the self-same view:
So like and so unlike—the Vision bright
That wrapt our Wanderer now in wondering wild delight.

There, as the shy white crane, so rarely seen,
Stands proudly gentle and reserved,
Erect, but with her neck back-curved
Her breast's light-waving snow to preen—
There Amohia stood. Although downcast the rays
Of her clear-shining eyes—and on her cheek
The rosy flushings momently that broke
Through the clear olive, some distress bespoke—
Yet grandly winning and queenly-meek,
Erect the Maiden stood. About her all

280

Her affluent hair, unstirred by any breeze
Fell sheltering—a sable silky pall.
How like a strong ebullient swarm
Of hive-o'erflowing honey-bees
Forth issuing black and glad a hundred ways,
Still soaking wet and dripping yet,
The tendrilled tresses spread and ran and clung,
Moulding dark gloss on many a balanced charm;
And sinuously streaming
Adown her polished shoulder palely gleaming,
And rippling ebon-soft over her rounded arm,
A natural drapery hung.

O lovingly the Moonlight's sheeny whiteness
On that unmoving figure slept!
Here sweetly swelling into sudden brightness
That through rich waves of jetty tracery beamed;
There lost, as into sudden mellow shade
Caressingly they curled and crept!
Bewilderingly beautiful that chequering made
The graces of a Form wherein it seemed
A bounding spirit of young elastic Life essayed
In conscious exultation
To float and flow and wind and wander
And on itself return in many a coy meander
And subtle undulation:
And yet—as all perfection blends
Harmonious opposites for happiest ends—
Seemed ever in its wild luxuriance chained
And by a stronger spirit of proud reserve restrained,
Upholding the fine form in wingèd lightness;
As ivory serpents, held in graceful bond
Would twine of old about a silver Hermes-wand.

281

III.

So Amohia stood—nor longer sported;
Quite serious now, perhaps a little trembling;
Yet, though her bosom's quickened rise
And fall betrayed the anxious breathing,
By clear unconscious innocence supported,
And that sweet might of Nature when it knows
Few laws conventional that teach dissembling;
So that true Love in loving act o'erflows
As truly, artlessly, in loveliest guise,
As from the bud's moss-browned and tender sheathing,
When Spring has swollen its crumpled tissues
And filled them with its genial influence, issues
That crimson apparition—the young rose.

“Stranger—from far realms that lie
Beyond the steep slope of the sky,
Hapless Amohia, see,
Chieftain's daughter though she be,
Gives her love, her life to thee.
Amohia throws aside
Rank and chieftainship and pride;
For the lonely Stranger's sake
Every tie has dared to break;
Dared desert, with him to roam,
Father, Mother, friends and home;
All the Atuas' wrath to brave,
But to be the Stranger's slave.—
Take her—teach her—till she be
Worthy thy great race and thee!”

282

“Dearest—loveliest—bravest Maid,
Your true love shall be well repaid!
But whence, and how, my grand Wildflower,
Came you—and thus—at such an hour?”

“I swam the Lake—was almost gone—
Reached land and hither stole alone.”

IV.

Surprise a moment held him dumb;
And why set down the words he spoke—
Disjoined and crowded as the sum
Of mingled feelings that within him woke?—
What speech has Passion's mastering moods? what speech
Is possible to any Ecstasy?
Can finite words an infinite feeling reach,
Or the mere bounded Intellect express
The Soul's emotions in their boundlessness?
No! as the sky-drawn moisture that distils
Down from the sky-aspiring hills,
A sea-side valley slowly fills;
But, if some milder earthquake's pant
Have slightly changed its downward slant,
Suddenly bursts the marsh below
And seaward rushes in mad overflow,
Bearing before it to the mighty Main
The wrecked and flowery richness of the plain,
Till all the calm eternal blue,
About the outlet of the river new,

283

Is strewn with floating fragments—little isles
Where still the clinging flax-flower smiles,
Minute azolla-stains of ruddiest hue,
And many a water-loving bloom that grew
Luxuriant while the swamp its moisture could sustain:—
So Speech and all the forms of Thought,
Yea, every medium Intellect supplies,
Are shattered and distraught,
Whene'er the o'er-informing Soul doth rise
And swell and sweep in native might
On to its kindred Infinite;
And broken words and images essay
In vain the abounding current to convey,
In vain to express the inexpressible;
While blissful moans and happy murmurs tell,—
And only they,—
How the Eternal that within us sleeps,
Stirred to its inmost mystic deeps,
Is welling forth its own imperial way;
Bursting the crust where Custom's weeds are growing,
And its material marge triumphantly o'erflowing!

V.

What wonder therefore if our youth's emotion,
With no coherent flow of phrases fair,
Could answer that devotion?
If, while beneath the showering night
Of gleaming hair, dark eyes all light
Burned on him—speaking speechless tendernesses,
He could but answer, warm and wild,

284

With many a fervent deep ejaculation
Of pity, love and admiration;
With broken words and tones endearing,
Soothing, comforting and cheering;
And the soul-converse was sustained
With the only eloquence of passionate caresses,
Kissed eyes and lips, and fluttering breath and fondled tresses,
And throbbing hearts together strained:
Till with his cloak around her thrown
He led her to his dwelling lone;
By all the law the land supplied
So wedded and so made his bride:
And as they went in rapturous tone
Loving and low, half murmured and half sung
A playful tender ditty in her native tongue:

“Praise her—bless her—O caress her! lavish glorious gifts upon her;
Piles of woven wealth to dress her—glossy-rippling robes of honour!
O our Pride, the peerless, single,—many-vassaled Chiefs' descendant,—
Flax o' the finest, silky-tasselled—breadth o'er breadth of costly chequer,
Choicest broideries shall bedeck her! all to grace that form divinest,
And its buoyant blithe uprightness, and its lithe and sinuous lightness,
Rapture-fraught for souls supinest,—proudly, peerlessly array.—

285

Range for birds of beauteous feather, marsh and mountain, dell and dingle;
Stock-doves on whose necks resplendent rich reflections melt and mingle;
Black Sultana-birds blue-breasted as deep Ocean in blue weather;
Cuckoos, many a shy Sea-comer with its green dusk-golden glimmer,
Lackey of the golden Summer, Sun-attendant;—and scarce dimmer
Than that wanderer alien-nested, paraquitos crimson-crested,
Like Spring's emerald verdure vested;—parrots dyed like dying day.—
Weave their downy hues together—weave, relieve each tint transcendent;
And the mantle bride-beseeming, fair as fairy gifts in dreaming,
Round her shoulders shapely showing, wrap it fondly—fold the flowing
Feathery softness, beaming, glowing, with the rainbow's radiance gay.—
From her rounded neck dependent—where it curves so proud and stately,
Where her buoyant bosom heaves in tranquil triumph how sedately,
Precious trinkets, famous, greatly-storied from old days or lately,
Lucid as transparent leaves in sunshine, shall their green display.—
For her tresses—massy-streaming—floods of glittering gloom and brightness—

286

Black as pine-trunks burnt and gleaming, charred and sunlit boles and bosses!
Heron-plumes of snowy whiteness—down of sea-pure albatrosses—
Like foam-flakes on torrents raving through swart chasms night-encaving—
O'er those ebon wavelets waving,—shall the Chieftainess betray.—
Then caress her—praise her—bless her; load her with delight and honour;
Let no evil thing distress her; lavish all your love upon her!”