Canto the Fourth. Trees and the Tree-God.
1. Ranolf, on a hint from Amo, rhapsodises on beautiful trees and plants.
2. Amo affects jealousy; which tree shall she be? 3. Evening. 4.
A kiss.
I.
What kindly Genius couching Poets' eyes—
For Custom's cataracts dim the keenest sight—
Gives them the Infant's crystal power to prize
The simplest beauty that before them lies,
Transparent to its wonder and delight?—
“Why, Rano,” with her cheerful smile
Said Amo, at her wifely tasks, the while
He, as we told, in such enthusiast-style
Revelled in all the leafy life,
All the green revel round them rife:
“If you were Tanë's self indeed,
The Atua and the Father of the Trees,
You could not of their ways take greater heed!”
The fancy seemed his mood to please:
“Hurrah!” he cried, and following her lead
Went on, as with mock-solemn triumph fired,
Half to himself, and half to her, as whim
To speech or thought unspoken guided him,
To dally with the notion she inspired:
1.
“I am Tanë—the Tree-God!
Mine are forests not a few—
Forests, and I love them greatly,
Moss-encrusted, ancient, stately;
Lusty, lightly-clad, and new.
Mottled lights and chequered changes,
Mid all these my roam and range is;
Shadowy aisle and avenue;
Creeper-girdled column too:
In the mystic mid-day night
Many-mullioned openings bright;
Solemn tracery far aloof
Letting trefoiled radiance through!
Many a splintered sun-shaft leaning
Staff-like straight against the roof
Of black alcoves overspread—
Arched with foliage intervening
Layer on layer in verdurous heaps,
'Twixt that blackness and the sun;
With a tiny gap, but one,
Light-admitting; brilliance-proof,
Day-defying, all unriven
Elsewhere—all beside offscreening
Of the grand wide glow of Heaven!
Or, where thinner the green woof
Veils the vault of outer blue,
Many a branch that upward creeps,
Wandering darkly overhead
Under luminous leafy deeps,
Which an emerald splendour steeps
From the noon that o'er them sleeps!—
O I tend them, love, defend them,
And all kindly influence lend them;
For my worship all are suited,
If, but, in the firm earth rooted,
By the living air recruited,
They, ere it grow withered, dull,
Their green mantle beautiful,
Still repair, revive, renew.”
(Then to himself, more musingly:)
“Many creeds, and sects and churches,—hopeful each its own way going;
Bigots, sceptics, saints and sinners—precious to the Power all-knowing,
So they keep absorbing ever more of Truth, the ever-growing.”
(This, by the way, because he could not smother
That inveterate tendency
To find in all things symbols of each other.)
2.
“I am Tanë—the Tree-God!
My sons are a million;
In every region,
Their name it is legion;
And they build a pavilion
My glory to hold.
Which shall my favourites be?
Which are most pleasing to me,
Of their shapes and their qualities manifold?—
The gigantic parasite-myrtle
That over its victims piles up
Great domes of pure vermilion
Filling the black defiles up:
The King-Pine that grandly towers:—
The fuchsia-tree with its flowers,
Poor rustics that timidly ape
Their sisters of daintier shape
With their delicate bells downhung,
And their waxen filaments flung
So jauntily out in the air,
Like girls in short crimson kirtle
That spins in the wind as they whirl
A-tiptoe one pointed foot,
And one horizontal outshoot:—
The clematis-garlands that curl
And their graceful wreaths unfurl
From many a monstrous withe;
Snowy-starred serpents and lithe
That in sable contortions writhe,
Till Fancy could almost declare
That great Ophiucus, down-hurled
From his throne in the skyey star-world,
Had been caught with his glittering gems
'Mid those giant entangling stems
Which he deemed but a dwarfish copse,
So was struggling and surging in vain
To rear his vast coils o'er their tops
And his gleaming lair regain!—
Then the limber-limbed tree that will shower its
Corollas—a saffrony sleet,
Till Taupo's soft sappharine face is
Illumined for wonderful spaces
With a matting of floating flowerets—
Drift-bloom and a watersward meet
For a watersprite's fairy feet;
'Tis the kowhai, that spendthrift so golden:
But its kinsman to Nature beholden
For raiment its beauty to fold in
Deep-dyed as of trogon or lory,
How with parrot-bill fringes 'tis burning,
One blood-red mound of glory!
Then the pallid eurybia turning
The vernal hill-slopes hoary
With its feathers so faintly sweet
And its under-leaves white as a sheet;—
All of them, all—both the lofty and lowly,
Equally love I and wholly;
So that each take form and feature
After its genuine law and nature
Its true and peculiar plan;
So that each, with live sap flowing,
Keep on growing, upward growing,
As high from the earth as it can!
“Many creatures—varied features—dark and bright still onward moving;
Tyrants—tumblers—boors and beauties, kings and clowns alike approving,
To them all the Gods are gracious—to them all the Gods are loving.
3.
“I am Tanë the Tree-God.
What will you bring to me?
Fruits of all kinds will I take
So ripe, true fruits they be!
Melting pulp—juicy flake—
Sweet kernel or bitter—
None are better—none fitter—
All are grateful to me.
But your shell with no lining
Though splendidly shining;
But your husk with a varnish
That nought seems to tarnish;
If any of these I espy,
Empty and hard and dry,
That serve but for clamour and clatter
Or the genuine fruit to belie;
These cheats will I shiver and shatter
And their fragments scornfully scatter,
O none of them bring to me!
“Pains and passions—deeds and duties—virtues, vices—gifts and graces—
Have not all, their value, uses—in their various fitting places—
So they be not false pretences, mocking masks for natural faces?—
“There, my sweet one, that is what,
Were I Tanë (which, thank God, I'm not,
Seeing mine's a happier lot)
That is about what I should say,
Had I my own, my wondrous way.”
II.
And Amo coming to his side amused,
Her smiling eyes with tender love suffused,
“How fond, O Rano mine,” said she,
“Of these dumb things you seem to be;
I shall be jealous soon, I think,
And wish myself a Tree!”
“A tree, my Amo! but I wonder which?
O which so fair that we might link
Such loveliness in fancy with its form?
Which should be haven for a heart so warm,
So sweet a Spirit's dwelling-place?
The Rata-myrtle for its bloom so rich—
Or Tree-fern for its perfect grace?
Its slender stem I would embrace
How fondly!—nay, but that would never do—
That limbless tree-fern never should be you
With nothing but a stem and plumy crest!
Ah no! the glorious Rata-tree were best,
With blooming arms that spread around—above;
That should be you, my sole delight,
My darling bliss! that so I might
Embosomed in embowering beauty rest,
And nestle in the branches of my love!”
“Nay—but I would not be,” said Amo—“I,
That Rata—if the change I had to try;
Rather the snowy Clematis, to twine
About the tree I loved; or rather yet
That creeper Fern, with little roots so fine
Along its running cords, it seems to get
For its gay leaves with golden spots beset,
Its dearest nurture from the bark whereto
It clings so close; as if its life it drew,
Drew all its loving life from that alone—
As I from thee, Ranoro, all my own!”
She paused a tender moment—then resumed:
“Nay, not the Rata! howsoe'er it bloomed,
Paling the crimson sunset; for you know,
Its twining arms and shoots together grow
Around the trunk it clasps, conjoining slow
Till they become consolidate, and show
An ever-thickening sheath that kills at last
The helpless tree round which it clings so fast.
Rather, O how much rather than destroy
The thing I loved, the source of all my joy,
Would I, my Rano, share the piteous fate
The Rata's poor companion must await—
Were you the clasper, I the tree that died,
That you might flourish in full strength and pride!”
“Nay—nay—my Amo! were't to be my doom
To clasp you till you perished in your bloom,
Neither to misery should be left behind—
Together would we be to death consigned—
In death, as all through life, in love entwined.
But now, my lovely Clematis, be gay!—
Though never shall I see that Rata bright,
In murderous fondness, fastening round its prey
The serpent-folds that hug the friend they slay,
Without a sigh for the poor victim's plight;
Without a wish to cut and cleave away
The monster throttling what has been his stay;
Without some wonder why the Power divine
Includes such pictures in his world's design,
And even in lovely vegetable life
Leaves startling models of unnatural strife.”
III.
Thus they two in their dream. But Evening now
Steals, like a serious thought o'er joyous face,
Its cooling veil o'er the warm Earth to throw.
The hawk no longer soars in pride of place,
Stiff-wheeling with bent head in circles slow;
The teal and wild-duck leave the floating weed
And open pool, for sheltering rush and reed;
And home with outstretched necks the cormorants fly
In strings—each train dark-lettering the sky,
Now V exact, now lengthening into Y—
As arrow-like direct their course they steer
To haunts afar, unseen, but somewhere near
Those mountain-summits carpeted and black
With forests dense without a break or track,
Whence smooth and ferny spurs in golden dun
Of solemn sunlight undulating run
Down to dim bases lost in shadows blue
That blot the intervening gullies too—
Encroaching darkness creeping upward still
O'er chequered black-and-gold of dell and hill.
IV.
“How pleasant is the life those birds must lead—
About the sea all day to sport and feed,
Where'er they will, with little heed;
And flee away at night with aim so sure
Striking across the sky, so eager each
His inaccessible far roost to reach—
So secret, solitary and secure
In solitude. And is not ours like theirs—
As free, as lonely sweet, as void of cares!”
Said Ranolf, as beside him closer drew
Fair Amo: “Yes, my wildwood dove,
What have we else to do but live and love!”
And she, her native tongue, no doubt, too weak,
The fond delight that filled her heart to speak,
Replied in one more rich, she felt, though new,
That foreign language of a fervid kiss;
Shaping her smiling lips as if they might
Unlearnedly perform the mystic rite,
Some feature of its due observance miss.
“But see,” she hints, “Te Manu comes to say
The kúkupas are done he takes such pride
In cooking.”—As she spoke the youngster gay
Came running up and grinning cried:
Ranoro, come! come, Amo, quickly—do!
Ka rá-we! 'tis a glorious stew!”
