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3

Canto the First. Flight of the Lovers.

1. The Lovers leave Rotorua. Provisions. 2. Love dependent on lower deities. 4. Scenery. Forest; Swamps. 5, 6. The Sea-shore. 7. The Apteryx. Extempore hut. 9. Heavy rain. 10. Their amusements inside. 11. A model for sculpture. 12. Beauty of female form.

I.

The dawn, faint-tinted as a yellow rose,
Peeped behind mountains purple-black as sloes;
O'er these—a tuft of thick short shreds (not rays)
Of brilliancy, the Morning Star ablaze—
Awe-struck forerunner of the Sun beneath,—
On the funereal darkness seemed to gaze,
Checked at his sudden entrance on a scene
Solemn with all the sable pomp of death,
The thousand lights still burning for the Queen
Laid out in state—the just departed Night.—
Then Amo, starting from her brief repose,
Urged upon Ranolf their immediate flight;
For fly they must from that dread Priest she said,
Or even her Father by his counsels led.
4

Vain Ranolf's reasoned wish to try his skill
Upon her sire, and bend perchance his will
Into approval of their love.—“Nay—nay—
Fly—fly!” she prayed, and he of course gave way:
A power there's no resisting or ignoring,—
A loving, loved and lovely one imploring!
True, the romance of her proposal charmed;
As o'er its possibilities he ran,
Visions of risks defied his fancy warmed.
To steal by night through unsuspecting foes,
Or baffle them suspecting, was a plan
At which his buoyancy of spirit rose.
His followers therefore quickly paid—dismissed—
Were Northward with his light effects sent back.
One lad of Amo's tribe would still insist
(Te Manu 'twas, who brought the fish that day,
And served him since for pleasure and some pay)
Out of new love for him and old for her—
He should not from their side be forced to stir;
Pleading his usefulness—to bear a pack,
Cook—work—provide such comforts they would lack;
Nay, to their safety sometimes minister.
So be it then. What needs is promptly done;
Revolver trim and double-barrell'd gun,
Powder and shot and fish-hooks not a few,
And axe, and matches, most essential too;
Some extra mats for tent-roofs against rain;
And—better currency than minted gold,
A savage's best treasures to unfold—
Allowance good of treacle-smelling cakes
Of jammed tobacco-plaits; with odds and ends,
The boy at cost of carrying would retain
5

Of fancied value to himself or friends—
Light shoulder-burdens—he or Ranolf takes.

II.

Prosaic details, truly! Lady mine—
Who hold ethereal Love a power divine;
O let it not your fervid faith displease,
Romance so realistic stoops to these!
Love is the prime of Gods—O clearly!
A Thaumaturge and Master-mage is he;
Let all confess him as puissant—nearly—
As he conceits himself to be!
Yes! yes! we know, and none deny,
All risks, all ventures He will try,
All checks and chances dare—defy!
To his great heart and hope elate
What are the threats of adverse Fate!
How fade the frowns of Circumstance
Before his forward-leaping glance!
His course that ever forth and far
Seems trained by some triumphant Star
Shall rivers bound, shall mountains bar?—
One look, and lo! from mouth to fountain
Uprising from its gravelly bed,
Each river, shrunk to a silver thread
Floats gossamer-like across the lea;
One waive or nod of hand or head,
And every forest-puckered mountain
Rocked from its base uneasily
Goes crab-like lumbering to the Sea!—
Shall not the Ocean heave up pearls
To deck one Beauty's golden curls?
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Shall not the Stars come trickling down
If one dear brow demand a crown?—
Yes, fair ones! so shall you decree,
And youthful hearts shall all agree
In Love's divine supremacy!
Though duller Deities the while
May at his proud pretensions smile?
Bid Cold and gaunt-eyed Hunger clip
The splendour of his purple wings;
And from his graceful shoulders strip
The golden bow, the ivory quiver,
Unless across them too he flings
The wallet vile and vulgar scrip,
Replete with gross substantial things;
Nay, make the beauteous stripling shiver
Unless to some frieze cloak he clings;
Nor, jealous, let the bright Joy-Giver
From Psyche's mouth the honey sip,
And purse and press her sweet lips out
To semblance of a tempting pout,
Or round them bud-like for the bliss
Of a playful passionate kiss,
Till with his own he first have blown
Each rosy frozen finger-tip.
Ah sad! this glowing glorious God to see,
And think what paltry hests and heeds may be
Importunate, imperative as he!

III.

So to the forests on Taupiri's face
O'er the low cliffs at first the three retreat
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There they can find a handy hiding-place,
And Amohia rest through noonday heat.
At nightfall they retrace their steps at first
Uncertain—guided by immediate need
Of shelter—and resolve their course to shape
By Amo's counsel for the land that nursed
Her mother, whose great brother ruled indeed
O'er all the tribes about the earliest Cape
The Sun salutes when his resplendent hair
Shakes off the foam-flakes of his Ocean lair.
There she was well-beloved; and both might there,
She for her mother's, he for her sake, share
The nigh-related Chief's protecting care,
Secure alike from rescue and pursuit
With one so potent of such good repute.
So North of Roto-iti, East away,
And for the seaside by the Bounteous Bay,
Though from the route direct still given to stray,
They travel; resting in the woods by day
When needful, and by villages at night
Passing with cautious speed; and none the less
On Ranolf's part, with undisguised delight
At all the shifts, suspenses, and success
And stealthy freedom of their dexterous flight.

IV.

And thus o'er many a mountain wood-entangled,
And stony plain of stunted fern that hides
The bright green oily anise; and hill-sides
And valleys, where its dense luxuriance balks
With interclinging fronds and tough red stalks
The traveller's hard-fought path—they took their way.
8

Sometimes they traversed, half the dreary day,
A deep-glenned wilderness all dark and dank
With trees, whence tattered and dishevelled dangled
Pale streaming strips of mosses long and lank;
Where at each second step of tedious toil
On forms of fallen trunks moss-carpeted,
Perfect to every knot and bole, they tread,
And ankle-deep sink in their yielding bed
Of rottenness for ages turned to soil:—
Until, ascending ever in the drear
Dumb gloom forlorn, a sudden rushing sound
Of pattering rain strikes freshly on the ear,—
'Tis but the breeze that up so high has found
Amid the rattling leaves a free career!
To the soft, mighty, sea-like roar they list:—
Or else 'tis calm; the gloom itself is gone;
And all is airiness and light-filled mist,
As on the open mountain-side, so lone
And lofty, freely breathing they emerge.
And sometimes through a league-long swamp they urge
Slow progress, dragging through foot-sucking slush
Their weary limbs, red-painted to the knees
In pap rust-stained by iron or seeding rush;
But soon through limpid brilliant streams that travel
With murmuring, momentary-gleaming foam
That flits and flashes over sun-warmed gravel
They wade, and laughing wash that unctuous loam
Off blood-stained limbs now clean beyond all cavil
And start refreshed new road-knots to unravel.
And what delight, at length, that glimpse instils,
That wedge-shaped opening in the wooded hills,
Which, like a cup, the far-off Ocean fills!—
9

V.

Anon they skirt the winding wild sea-shore;
From woody crag or ferny bluff admiring
The dim-bright beautiful blue bloom it wore—
That still Immensity—that placid Ocean—
With all its thousand leagues of level calm,
Tremendously serene! he, fancying more
Than feeling, for tired Spirits peace-desiring,
With the world-fret and life's low fever sore—
Weary and worn with turmoil and emotion,—
The soothing might of its majestic balm.
Or to the beach descending, with joined hands
They pace the firm tide-saturated sands
Whitening beneath their footpress as they pass;
And from that fresh and tender marble floor
So glossy-shining in the morning sun,
Watch the broad billows at their chase untiring:
How they come rolling on, in rougher weather,—
How in long lines they swell and link together,
Till, as their watery walls they grandly lift,
Their level crests extending sideways, swift
Shoot over into headlong roofs of glass
Cylindric—thundering as they curl and run
And close, down-rushing to a yeasty dance
Of foam that slides along the smooth expanse;
Nor seldom, in a streaked and creamy sheet
Comes unexpected hissing round their feet,
While with great leaps and hurry-skurry fleet,
His louder laughter mixed with her's so sweet,
Each tries to stop the other's quick retreat.
10

VI.

Or else on sands that, white and loose, give way
At every step, they toil; till labour-sped
Their limbs in the noon-loneliness they lay
On that hot, soft, yet unelastic bed,
With brittle seaweed, pink and black o'erstrown,
And wrecks of many a forest-growth upthrown,
Bare stem and barkless branches, clean, sea-bleached,
Milk-white,—or stringy logs deep-red as wine,
Their ends ground smooth against a thousand rocks,
Dead-heavy, soaked with penetrating brine;
Or bolted fragment of some Ship storm-breached
And shattered—all with barnacles o'ergrown,
Grey-crusted thick with hollow-coned small shells—
So silent in the sunshine still and lone,
So reticent of what it sadly tells;
Which Ranolf then imagines till he shocks
Quick-sympathizing Amo with a tale
Of brave men lost, and haply lovers gone
For ever—never heard of nor forgot;
And so beguiles the bright one of her tears,
Which, while he kisses the wet cheek so pale
He charms away, and the sweet mourner cheers,
Hinting the contrast of their happier lot:
Then turns to livelier sights the scene supplied;
And near some river-mouth—shoal—marshy-wide—
Would mark the swarming sea-birds o'er the waste
Tremble across the air in glimmering flocks;
Or how, long-legged with little steps they plied
Their yellow webs, in such high-shouldered haste
Pattering along the cockle-filled sandbanks,
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Some refuse dainty of the Sea to taste;
Or standing stupified in huddled ranks
Still rounded up by the advancing tide—
White glittering squadrons on the level mud
Dressing their lines before the enclosing flood;
Or what strange instinct guided them so well,
Posed by their mollusk, up in air to start,
And soaring, on the rocks let fall the shell
Whose stubborn valves they could not force apart.

VII.

And once, hard by a gloomy forest-side,
Death-still and stirless all—save where one sees
A shaking glimmer of silver through the trees—
How Amo clapped her hands in pure delight
At Ranolf's puzzled wonder when he spied
What seemed so surely—for 'twas clear in sight—
Some furry three-legged thing—no tail—no head—
Fixed to the ground—a tripod!—how amazed
Was he to find when serpent-like it raised
Long neck and bill, and swiftly running fled,
'Twas nothing but that wing-less, tail-less bird
Boring for worms—less feathered too than furred—
The kiwi—strange brown-speckled would-be beast,
Which the pair hunted half the day at least,
While needful look-out young Te Manu kept.
Or else the lovers, tired or cautious, stepped
From the chalk-bouldered, pumice-crumbling strand
On to black broken-edged o'erlapping land;
And o'er the flax-swamped rushy level then
12

Betook themselves to some inviting wood
Just at the black-green opening of a glen
Where mighty trunks—grim shadowy columns—stood,
Solemn, expectant,—promising so meet
A shelter for their day or night retreat.
Shore-loving vine-trees, púriri, they were
The enormous mounds that, piled in swelling state,
Seemed cracking only with the very weight
Of light green foliage-masses everywhere
So caked, smooth-rounded and consolidate.
—How free—how free it was! nothing it seemed,
Between themselves and God! so Ranolf felt;—
That world of Man, how oft it seemed to melt
Wholly away! his Soul in contact brought
With Nature's nakedness, exulting teemed
With raptures Life refined had never bought;
Proud vigour from her vivid touches caught;
And from the exhilarating hale embrace
Drew hardier, wilder will to set at nought
All risks—and dauntless every danger face!—
Yet little this was needed now—although
Amo could not her anxious fears forego;
For dread of all that Priest might prompt destroyed
Half of the pleasure she had else enjoyed.

VIII.

Now, through some dim white days of ceaseless rain,
They waited till the sky should clear again,
Roofed by a hut no woodman would demur
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To call a palace for a forester.
Amid the trees—where loftiest towering grew
Some spiny-leaved totáras like the yew,
Root-buttressed, forty yards or so in height,—
They—ere the mist first gathering blanched the blue
Though many a sign that threatened rain they knew—
Had built a hasty homestead snug and tight.
Some of these trees, notch-circled near the ground,
That for such end their bark might well be dried,
Or trunks be seasoned for canoes, they found;
Their stringy coats were easily off-stripped,
In stripes, long, broad and heavy, upward ripped;
These, fastened on a frame of poles flax-tied,
Slant roof and walls against the windward side—
Made such a pleasant dwelling in six hours
As had withstood a month of drenching showers;
Thick fern and broom were fragrant floor and couch;
And to the sweetclean roof and walls upslung,
Guns, shot-belt, matches, flints and powder-pouch
And change of raiment, dry and safely hung.

IX.

In this retreat three quiet days they passed
In perfect shelter; and the time flew fast,
Though to the hut they mostly were confined,
And spite of care that lurked in Amo's mind.
Love wrapped in sunshine that rain-beaten bower,
Made prisoned solitude and silence dear;
Her care diverted, half-assuaged her fear;
Surcharged e'en trivial chat with eloquent power;
14

To slight details of daily intercourse
Gave magic sweetness and electric force;
Nay, lent to weeping Nature's gloomier hour
A gentle charm they ne'er before descried
When bathed in brilliant light her features smiled.
So Ranolf felt when over wood and wild
That quiet sadness first began to creep;
And sheltered safe within their mountain-nook
On his fern-pillow he could lie and look
Past forest tree-tops surging down the steep,
With rocks out-slanting bold, dark-red and grey—
Through the glen's mouth, o'er yellow plains outside,
Mixed with the skies, it seemed, so high and wide—
Melting to misty dimness far away;—
Look—but to feel with more supreme content
That luxury of loneliness profound—
No human soul but theirs for miles around;
Feel how serenely, pensively forlorn
The tender silence of the tearful Morn;
Of those unmoving trees as still as thought,
And leaves imbibing in their happy sleep
Rich greenness ever more refreshed and deep;
Each branch with bright drops hung that would not fall:
The faint blue haze upon the grass; while nought
But the slight tremble, shimmering on the shade
So glowing dark about their stems, betrayed
The fine soft rain's inaudible descent.
Then, as the thickening weather with its pall
Of gloom shut out the distant hills and sky,
How pleasant there to lounge secure and mark
Emerging from the mists in forests high
15

Black jutting trees to shadows turn, and fade,
Where sullen, ragged, smothering vapours weighed
Upon the nearer summits; or when wind
Arose, and hurried up the storm, behind
Their hill-protected hut and roof of bark—
To mark each sudden, snowy, crooked skein
With fibres opening here and there, appear
Along the sloping hollows all pure green
But now—inlaid between round knolls, and seen
White through thin clouds of level-driving rain.

X.

And then within their wildwood home, what cheer—
What manifold amusements might be found!
What pleasure in the necessary round
Of primitive provisions for so rude
A life—whose mere privations still endued
The hours that flew so fast with fleeter wings;
The merry makeshifts, and the thousand things
To tax contrivance, whence ingenious tact
A double comfort from discomfort wrings:
Scant implements still put to novel use;
Forced partnership in many a little act
For which e'en Love had else scarce found excuse.
Then Ranolf had in note-book to record
Brief hints of many an incident or word
That might the vivid memory reproduce
Of these bright scenes far hence when they should be
Forgotten into freshness. Or he made
Upon the inside smoothness of a square
Of that stripped bark, with pistol-barrel ruled,
Draft-chequers,—clipping flat for draughtsmen rare
16

Hard violet drupes of the great laurel-tree
And gold karaka-dates—and soon had schooled
His quick companion in the game they played
For kisses like Campaspe! though, he said,
Amo from Cupid had not cared to win
Cheek-bloom—lips bow-curved—tender turn of chin—
Hers sweeter far already! Or he strove
With taste, and skill—but not in like degree—
Still quickened, still impeded by his love—
Sketch-book on knee, to reproduce, though slight,
Some glimpses of the spirit-winning light
That danced in dazzling depths of Amo's eyes—
Some of her shape's enchanting symmetries;
While she, with wondering bright compliance bore
The frequent interruptions and delay
To the immediate work she had in hand,
As he so oft entreated her to stay
In that position just one moment more—
Just to continue so to kneel or stand—
Reach up—bend over—let him seize the charm
Of some fine posture, planted foot, or arm
Upraised, that any Sculptor's heart might warm.

XI.

And truly, every instant she displayed
A look or attitude that would have made
A Phidias turn admiring, though intent
On one fastidious finishing touch, the last—
One pumice-polish, warm wax-stain, that lent
Perfection to some wonder, now complete,
17

Some marble miracle or famous feat
Chryselephantine, all the world to beat,
And stamp his own surpassing self surpassed!
Though on his ears, already charmed, he felt
Aspasia's clear Milesian accents melt
In critic subtleties of praise that seize
The heart of his conception, and excite
The stoic soul of stately Pericles
Into confest emotions of delight.
Some look or gesture was each instant shown
That with as happily-tempting hints—assured
Forecast of chiselled triumphs, had allured
A Flaxman, say, that Phidias of our own—
As when at his soul's call, with beauty aflame
And dignity and grace immortal, came
(All chastened—checked by Art's severest curb—
Harmonious calm no passion could disturb)
Trooping divinities in grand array,
As if Olympus were his freehold—they
His tenants—slaves—who heard but to obey!—
But as the busy Maid would oft look round
With brows and high-upcurling lashes raised
And such a glance, what Ranolf wished—to ask—
Bright glance of innocent inquiry—sweet
Alert attention; or would leave her task,
And throw herself beside him on the ground
To see what 'twas that he would sometimes look
Half-pleased with, proud of, in the fast-leaved book
Where he “wrote images”—then with such heat
Would “pish” and “pshaw” at, as on her he gazed,
Abused the work so much—the model praised;
18

There, as she watched him, toying all the while
With those light locks she loved so, with a smile
Where such a depth of playful fondness shone;
Did she not then the very vision seem
Young Foley saw, when, scarce to manhood grown,
He brought old Athens back in that bright dream
Of Ino feeding her maternal joy
On purple temptings of her grape-fed boy?—
Or that which bade his great compeer achieve
The new-born loveliness of listening Eve?

XII.

But could wise Nature's so conspicuous Art,—
Lavish of might divinest to unfold
The gleam and glory of mere human limbs
Which all beside of form and hue bedims,—
If ever, fail with this susceptive heart
And fiery Sense, in her design to raise
That fervid admiration, uncontrolled
And uncontrollable, she must intend
Should ne'er be foiled for fairest moral end?—
No! well might that pure form, as he surveys
Its rich proportions cast in such a mould—
The perfect mould of Beauty, that combines
Rare lightness with luxuriance, and displays
What subtle joy can lurk in sinuous lines
That in their delicate winding wavure seem
Self-singing of their fine felicities
Like musical meanderings of a stream;
Well might its melodies of movement thrill
His soul with rapture—dash his baffled skill
With blank despair, as lovingly he tries
19

To fix the fluent loveliness—portray
Some one perfection from the plastic play
Of flitting statue-pictures that displace
Each other, and successive charms efface
In ever new varieties of grace!
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