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;
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;
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!”
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
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.
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;
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
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;
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!”
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
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.”
