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65

Canto the Sixth. A Geyser Yoked.

1. Warm baths. 2. More hotsprings and clay-pools. A pea-green tarn. 3. The rosy fountain-stairs and alabaster rock. 4. Geysers still. An emerald font. 5. Amo's notions of travelling. 6. The Roaring Geyser. Steam yoked. 7. A real Atua.

I.

Soon as the Morn from curtain-folds of grey
Peeped out with smile so grave and tender,
Like a young Queen upon her crowning-day
Blushing to put on all that gold and splendour—
Up rose the lovers to survey
The marvels yet unseen that round them lay.
Baths beauteous, statelier than of old
Rome's silken Emperors ever planned,
Of every nice degree of heat and cold,
Are ready crystal-filled at hand!
No need have they of fuel or fire
To cook their morning meal to their desire;
'Tis but to scrape a primrose-tinted seam,
Some sulphur-crusted fissure dry
That runs through fern and grass hard by—
Up comes the hot and fizzing steam,
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Wherein—or plunged in water boiling blue,
The food suspended is without ado
In style as wholesome quickly drest
As Savarin's choicest, Soyer's best.

II.

Forthwith their gladsome way they take
To all the marvels of the Lake.
To Wáta-poho's endless wail
They list—the groans its tortures wrest
From its hard agonizing breast,
So hollow, inward-deep and fierce,
As upward shoot its showers intense,
Cramming the narrow shaft they pierce
Through shuddering rocks blanched ashy-pale;
Hot water, steam and sulphur-smoke
Commingling in one column dense
Of white terrific turbulence!
But other gentler feelings woke
Its sister-fountain welling nigh
Whose bursts of grief for moments brief
Long-intervalled, in streams outbroke,
And then would sink away and die
With such soft moan relapsing slow—
Such long-drawn breath of utter woe—
It well became its mournful name,
‘Ko-ingo’—‘Love's desponding Sigh.’
They visit then that narrow glen,
Where at the foot of hills forlorn,
Silicious slabs of spar flood-borne,
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Like cakes of ice when Spring is young,
Burst up by freshets wild, are flung.
And slow they pick their cautious way
By liquid beds of creamy clay,
Where large white nipples rise and sink,
And lazy bubbles break and fume,
Up to a small square tarn pea-green—
As green and bright as malachite,
Beneath a crimson cliff in part
White-mottled, but along the brink
Of that clear water's grass-hued sheen
(Where azure dragon-flies will dart
A moment)—feathered rich and dark
With mánuka like fragrant broom.
And near the valley's mouth they mark,
Where thickets dense scarce leave a track,
A boiling mud-pool sputtering black
And baleful;—mark, above its gloom
What weird wild shapes the rocks assume!
Here, worn by water's sapping might,
Time-crennelled turrets half o'erthrown;
There, idols blurred by ages' flight
To shapes of unconjectured stone;
Now on the hill's low brow upright,
Like men who walk in dreams by night,
Dumbfounded, tottering—lost and lone;
Now, muffled forms their faces shrouding
Opprest with some unheard-of doom;
Or woe-struck up the hillside crowding—
Funereal mourners round a tomb:—
Grotesque and ominous and grim,
As Doré's wonder-teeming whim
E'er forged and fixed in stony trance
Of subtle-shaped significance.
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III.

And next across the Lake they steer
To see that fair cascaded stair
That yester-eve they passed so near—
‘The Fountain of the Clouded Sky,’
Tu-kápua-rangi—fitly styled,
It flings its steam so wide and high.
'Tis rosy rime they climb this time;
For floors and fringes, terrace piled
O'er terrace, glow with faint carmine
As fashioned of carnelian fine;
As if, continuous, full, from heaven
Some wide white avalanche downward driven
Came pouring out of Sunset, stained
With sanguine hues it still retained.
But at the topmost terrace—lo,
A vision like a lovely dream!—
A basin large, its further marge
And surface slightly veiled with steam
That thinly driving o'er it flies,
Spreads, level with the level plain
Of smoothest milk-white marble grain:
And broad all round that basin's brink
A double stripe—one delicate pink—
One lemon-yellow—bordering dyes
That whiteness, and with even hues,
Fair as a rainbow laid on snow,
Its wavy outline still pursues.
But through the driving vapour, see,
Translucent depths of azure, bright
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And soft as heaven's divinest blue—
A gulf profound of liquid light!
And from those depths, uprising through
That azure light—yet all beneath
The steaming surface—still as death,
In snowy mute solemnity,
A mighty forward-bending peak
Of marble bows; shaped like a paw,
Say, some enormous polar bear's,
Thick-set with many a flattened claw,
All one way level-pointing—scale
O'er scale like th' Indian pangolin's mail—
All snowiest alabaster!—Weak,
Too weak, were any words to speak
The hushed mysterious charm it wears,
That ghostly-lovely miracle,
Whose sides of snow far down below
In boiling light that round them lies,
Fade where the clear cerulean glow
Of that unfathomed fervent well
In tenderest turquoise dimness dies!
O well may Ranolf for a while
Enthusiast-like, sit rapt before
That heaven-blue gulf and rock snow-white,
Unconscious even of Amo's smile,
Unconscious of her joyous eyes,
And loving arms he scarce could feel
That softly would around him steal
As silent by his side she lay
On that pure speckless snowy floor
With pink and saffron purfle gay.
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IV.

Thus all the varied fountains found
Among the ferny hills that bound
Mahana, and a mile around,—
Of every flow and hue and sound
They visit;—tall columnar mound
And diamond-cone, and haycock-heap
Of boiling snow, and springs that leap
And languish, spurting fitful spray,
And cloud-crowned stems of steam that spout
At seasons, or shoot up alway;
Hid white about this verdurous waste
Like statues in proud gardens placed.
And one large font whose hollow bed
With branching emerald coral spread,
Through brilliant boiling crystal spied,
Looks daintiest moss green-petrified!
And sights as dread they meet throughout,
As wild Imagination's worst
Of black hell-broths and witches' bowls
Infernal—Dante-pits accurst,
Here realized in cankerous holes
And sloughs of mud as red as blood,
Pitch-black, or viscid yellow-drab,
Or pap of clay light-bluish gray,
Or sulphurous gruel thick and slab:
Each sputtering, hot, commixture dire,
Earth mineral-stuffed, and flood and fire,
Together pashed and pent-up make,
And fuse in sluggish fever nought can slake.
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So passed the day; and swiftly sped
Mid scenes where marvels ever varying rise;
The wanderers' eyes with wonder ever fed—
Bright with continual flashes of surprise.

V.

Late after noon it was, when tired the pair
Returning to their starting point, once more
Beside the mighty geyser stood
That flings a panting column high in air—
‘Ohápu’—‘Fountain of the dreadful Roar.’
Their fancy sated with the sight of fear,
They sate upon the hill above
That cauldron, in the shade of rocky wood
By bursting spring and boiling flood
Distorted;—sate in lounging mood
In careless converse, to themselves how dear!
(Is any talk too trifling for true love?)
Where still the Geyser's raging they could hear.
—“This loitering through the land on foot,
Now slow, now faster, as may suit
One's humour best, I do enjoy
So thoroughly—did always from a boy!”—
Said Ranolf, as himself he threw
Upon the stunted fern—“Do you?”
“On foot!” said Amo, “how else could you go?
Though in your land, I've heard, indeed,
That travellers sometimes go at greater speed
In strangest style—I ne'er believed it, though.”
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“What did you hear, my Amo?”
“It was he
E Ruka, who had sailed beyond the sea;
But he so many monstrous stories told
With face so true, by young and old
‘Kai-títo-nui’ he was named,
‘The big lie-swallower;’ ‘pumpkin-headed’ too,
To take whate'er he heard for true—
They called him. I should be ashamed
His silly solemn stories to repeat.”
“But let me hear about the travelling, sweet!”
“Well, promise not to laugh—at least, not laugh
Too much at me. I did not credit half
The story, mind. He said, your people use
To travel in, great land-canoes,
Dragged by enormous dogs as tall
As men, or taller; nay, more strange—
A thing that had to do with travel,
Though how, I could not quite unravel—
That beasts about your country range
To which the mighty Moas were small
Our songs make mention of; that these
Gigantic monsters, each and all
Have double heads and shoulders double,
Six legs or so; and therefore go
Swift as the wind; then without trouble
Can split in two whene'er they please,
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And both the fragments when they sever,
Can run about as well as ever!—
Nay, now, but I will hold your lips—
You are not to laugh so—understand;
I will not take away my hand,
Kiss as you may my finger-tips.”
The fact explained to her well nigh
As wondrous as the fiction seemed:
What! get astride those beasts and fly!
'Twas like what Maui did or schemed,
Who fished the Isles up—almost hitched
The Sun into his noose, and then
Had freed the happy sons of men
From Night—Death—every denizen
Of Darkness—all the evil crew
Of powers bewitching or bewitched.

VI.

“My Child—but these are trifles to
The wondrous things our people do.—”
He pointed toward the place where bellowing, crashing,
That fierce terrific Hotspring raged;
With monstrous head in furious foam upsoaring,
And boiling billows round the crater dashing,
Its crusted soot-brown sides like demons lashing;
Or if a moment from its maddest mood
The lapsing Geyser seemed to sink assuaged,
Mounting again amid the ceaseless roaring,
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Like hissing Cobra with inflated hood
Upswelling swift—its reeking rush renewing,
With force and frenzy evermore accruing!
“You hear,” he said, “that hell-pool dread:
What would you think if I should say
My people have the skill to yoke
The fiercest whirls of steam that ever broke
From that tremendous pit of wrath, and tether
As many moving houses gay
Behind it, as would all your tribe contain;
Then make it whisk them o'er the plain,
Aye! all your Tribe at once together,
As smoothly, rapidly as flew
The Kingfisher the other day
With chestnut breast and back so blue
That round our heads came swooping, screaming,
Because we chanced to saunter near
The barkless twisted tree-trunk (gleaming
In sunshine silver-sharp and clear
Against far purple hills) that hid
The nest wherein his young ones lay?”
“Well, but if such a word you spoke
I could but think, I could but say,
'Twas my Ranoro's whim to joke;
And on her fond reliance play
Who takes and trusts his every word,
As if an Atua's voice she heard.”
“Nay; pretty one! 'tis simple fact—
No silly jest, but truth exact.”
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“Well, then, my Chief, my Master dear
Shall do as I, his handmaid, bid,
And let me all the wonder hear.”
“Your language has no words, I fear—”
“Ah, we poor Maori! worthless still,
In deeds and words, no power, no skill!—
But tell me—that tremendous flying
Is it not something dreadful, frightful
Your people tremble at, while trying?”
“Not dreadful, dearest, but delightful—”
And then with her request complying,
“See—” he went on, as best he could, constraining
Strange words and strange ideas to fit—
Though all the interruptions we omit
Where foreign thought or phrase required explaining:—
“See! all in order ranged at hand
The moving houses ready stand;
Your tribe all ranged in order too,
Inside them sit—imagine how;
We take our places, I and you—”
(“Yes—were I close to you as now!”—)
“Impatient frets the giant, Steam,—
You hear his wild complaining scream;
You hear him hissing ere he start
Like pinned-down Snake that strives to dart;
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Then off at once! in perfect row
Swift as a lance your warriors throw,
Men, houses, all, away we go!—
Give place! give place! in silent race
The distant woods each other chase!
Trees, hedges, hamlets—far and wide,
They reel and spin, they shift and slide!
The dim horizon all alive—
Hills, plains and forests, how they drive!
Determined to keep up and see
They shoot ahead as fast as we:
But nearer objects, soon as spied,
Detach themselves and backward glide,
Behind us drifting one by one;
Wink past the others and are gone!
See! parallel field-furrows broad
That lie right-angled to the road,
Like swiftly-turning wheel-spokes play—
Turn—open—float and flit away!
More speed—more speed! and shriller cries!
The panting road begins to rise,
And like a whirling grindstone flies!
The fields close by can scarce be seen,
A swift continuous stream of green!—
—But fix upon the scene around
A steadier glance—in how profound
A stillness seems that hamlet bound:
How solemn, in secluded meadows
Those oak trees standing on their shadows;
That church-tower wrapt in ivy-fleece,
How sacred its inviolate peace!
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The riot of our wild career
Seems rushing through a land asleep
Where all things rapt—entranced, appear,
Or if they move, can only creep;
The lightest car, the heaviest wain—
(Those land-canoes, you know, we use)
And walking men whose figures plain
A moment on the eye remain,
Seem toiling backwards, all in vain!—
Then sudden—close—ere you can think,
The blackest blinding midnight seems
To make your very eyeballs shrink;
The air is dank—a hollow roar
And deeper, harsher than before
Is mingled with the Giant's screams,
As—all the houses in a row—
Right through a Mountain's heart we go!
But swiftly from the jaws of night
Emerging, screeching with delight,
Outcomes with unabated might
The Monster and pursues his flight!
In snowy stream thick-issuing flies
His furious breath across the skies:
Each labourer as the ponderous whirr,
The hammer-beats, incessant, strong,
And fast as flap of flying bird,
The monster's eager pulse, are heard,
Suspends the busy fork or prong
And turns to look, but scarce can see
The phantom, ere the rush and stir,
Men, monster, long-linked houses, we—
All smoothly thundering, tearing on,
A human hurricane—are gone!”—
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VII.

She listened with rapt lips asunder,
And rounded eyes of brilliant wonder:
Love lent her Faith—nor could she draw
Distinctions nice between what broke
Or did not break, the natural law;
But could she, 'twould have been the same;
Not what was said, but he who spoke
Made what she heard as what she saw.
That cloudy madness chained and curbed—
And all her Tribe turned undisturbed
Into a screeching bird that flew
Unchecked the yielding Mountains through!
What myth could daunt her after that?
What miracle could Superstition name
Were not beside it commonplace and flat—
To stagger her belief, too tame?—
“These foreigners,” she smiled, “'tis true,
Whate'er they wish, their Atuas do!”
“An Atua—yes! divine not dread—”
(But this was rather thought than said)
“Could I but make her understand
How this benignant Genie grand,
In form so fierce, in deeds so bland,
Is toiling still o'er sea and land
With might unwearied and unworn
By slow degrees to raise Mankind;
Bestowing god-like powers, designed
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For mightier millions yet unborn,
To wrest her plenteous treasure-horn
From Nature's wise reluctant hand;
Consigning so to second place
The Body's too absorbing claims;
Clearing the ground for higher aims;
Wiping the tears from Man's sad face;
Amalgamating every race—
Creating Time—destroying Space.”
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