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II.

'Twas dead of night; the stars with clouds were blurred:
Within the fort the wearied warriors lay
And slept or still discussed the deadly fray.
As noiselessly as Sunbeams on the plain
That shine and shift and fade and shine again,
Bright Amo tended Tangi's fevered pain.
Solemn and deep—distinct in every word,
The intermittent watch-song might be heard
O'er the monotonous, moaning, plaintive strain
Of women wailing for their kinsmen slain,
In groups, with heads down-bent upon their knees—
A musical low tremulous hum like bees—
Or swelling high like far-off murmuring seas;
But o'er it rose the watch-song clear and plain:
For even the sentinels as round and round
With frequent pause they paced the higher ground,
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Had many a chaunt and metaphoric snatch
Of verse, to while the tedium of their watch;
(Say ye, the wise, O worthy of all praise,
Who toil, with tokens from forgotten days
The veil from that grand mystery to raise
The origin of Man and all his ways—
Say through what inborn need, what instinct strong,
These savage races are such slaves to Song!)
But these, the watchers round Mokoia's fort
Were sounding through the gloom, in phrases short
By snatches given, a song against surprise,—
Half chaunt—half shouts, deep melancholy cries
Whose purport feebler paraphrase alone
Can give—the sense that to themselves it gave;
For the simplicity of that rude stave
Was so severe, its literal words made known
Were almost gibberish in their brevity:
Only dilution can lend any zest
Or nutriment a stranger could digest
To song in short-hand, verse so cramped—comprest,
The very pemmican of poetry:
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