Ranolf and Amohia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ranolf and Amohia

A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised

Domett, Alfred (1811-1887)

[section]

RANOLF AND AMOHIA:

VOLUME I.

PRELUDE.

BOOK THE FIRST. THE SAILOR-STUDENT.

Canto the First. The Sea-boy.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. Will-o'-wisp-chasing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Third. From Wisp to Morass.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Terra Firma.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

Canto the Fifth. Cloud-blowing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. The Shipwreck.

II.

III.

IV.

BOOK THE SECOND. THE SOUTH-SEA VILLAGERS.

Canto the First. The Rescue.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Second. The ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. A Woodland Jaunt.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fifth. The Legend of Tawhaki.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Sixth. Mythical Cosmogonies.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Seventh. The Captive.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE THIRD. ALL IN A SUMMER NIGHT.

Canto the First. Miroa's Tidings.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Second. The Song-cheered Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Fourth. Legends of the Spirit-Land.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Amohia at the Fountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. Silence and Moonlight.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.

II.

III.

IV.

II.

VOLUME II.

BOOK THE FOURTH. A LATTER-DAY EDEN.

Canto the First. Flight of the Lovers.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Canto the Second. Miroa's Story.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Canto the Third. Love and Nature luxuriant.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Trees and the Tree-God.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. The Fountain-Terraces.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. A Geyser Yoked.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. English Maidens.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE FIFTH. STILL IN EDEN.

Canto the First. The Haunted Mountain.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. Sports on the Lake.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. The Cicada.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. A loving Questioner.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. A cheery Theorist.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Sixth. Love beats Logic.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. An airy Nest.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

BOOK THE SIXTH WAR.

Canto the First. The Beleaguered Fortress.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. War needs Idealizing.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Third. The grand Assault.

II.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Fourth. Fight between ‘Sounding Sea’ and ‘Angry Star.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Fifth. Love fed by War.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Sixth. An old wrong avenged.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

[section]

VIII.

Canto the Seventh. Death of the ‘Sounding Sea.’

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

BOOK THE SEVENTH. SELF-SACRIFICE.

Canto the First. Weariness.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Second. A sad Resolve.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Third. Death of the Magician.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Fifth. A Vision.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. The Departure.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

I. VOLUME I.

vii

PRELUDE.

viii

----και η ελπισ—μεγαλη. Plato: Phædo, 145.

1

Well! if Truth be all welcomed with hardy reliance,
All the lovely unfoldings of luminous Science,
All that Logic can prove or disprove be avowed:
Is there room for no faith—though such Evil intrude—
In the dominance still of a Spirit of Good?
Is there room for no hope—such a handbreadth we scan—
In the permanence yet of the Spirit of Man?—
May we bless the far seeker, nor blame the fine dreamer?
Leave Reason her radiance—Doubt her due cloud;
Nor their Rainbows enshroud?—

2

From our Life of realities—hard—shallow-hearted,
Has Romance—has all glory idyllic departed—
From the workaday World all the wonderment flown?
Well, but what if there gleamed, in an Age cold as this,
The divinest of Poets' ideal of bliss?
Yea, an Eden could lurk in this Empire of ours,
With the loneliest love in the loveliest bowers?—
In an era so rapid with railway and steamer,
And with Pan and the Dryads like Raphäel gone—
What if this could be shown?

3

O my friends, never deaf to the charms of Denial,
Were its comfortless comforting worth a life-trial—
Discontented content with a chilling despair?—
Better ask as we float down a song-flood unchecked,
If our Sky with no Iris be glory-bedecked?
Through the gloom of eclipse as we wistfully steal
If no darkling auréolar rays may reveal
That the Future is haply not utterly cheerless:
While the Present has joy and adventure as rare
As the Past when most fair?

4

And if weary of mists you will roam undisdaining
To a land where the fanciful fountains are raining
Swift brilliants of boiling and beautiful spray
In the violet splendour of skies that illume
Such a wealth of green ferns and rare crimson tree-bloom;
Where a people primeval is vanishing fast,
With its faiths and its fables and ways of the past:
O with reason and fancy unfettered and fearless,
Come plunge with us deep into regions of Day—
Come away—and away!—

[_]

NOTE.—Words in the Maori language occurring in the following poem, should be pronounced precisely like Italian; and the double letter ‘ng’ like the softer nasal sound of the same letters in English. Thus ‘Maori’ is pronounced so as to rhyme with ‘dowry,’ with an indication, however, both of the ‘a’ and the ‘o’; and ‘Tangi,’ with ‘slangy’ (if there be such a word in English).

The reader is requested to pronounce ‘Amohia’ with the accent on the penultimate, ‘Amohia.

BOOK THE FIRST. THE SAILOR-STUDENT.

Canto the First. The Sea-boy.

1. Ranolf's childhood. 2. He goes to Sea. 3–5. Sea-life. Night-sailing. Trade-winds. A breeze aft. A squall. The whale. 6. Reefing topsails. The sprung jibboom. 7. Observes men of various creeds and climes: India, Canada, etc. 8. Jamaica. 9. Has to leave the sea.

I.

Where hardy Seamen mix with Mountaineers
As hardy at the extreme of Britain's isle;—
Where rugged Capes confront the Arctic sky,
Now faint beneath the pale and tender smile
Of summer's lingering light that sadly cheers;
Now through rent chasms of the storm-cloud's pile
Seen lurking lone in grim obscurity;—
Where whirlpools boil, and eddying currents scar
The tides that sweeping from the Atlantic far
In finest season at their gentlest flow
Swarm up a thousand rocks, shoot high in air—
Columns of cloud a moment towering clear—
Then sink at once plumb-down and disappear;
While all the shining rocksides, black and bare,

Are streaked with skeiny streams of hurrying snow
Like stormers beaten back that headlong go;—
Where, sparely bright with scant sheep-speckled grass,
Sleep wastes of purple heather and brown morass;—
There did young Ranolf a glad childhood pass.

For ages had his rough sea-faring race
Hailed from a home, though scarce a dwelling-place,
Where Devon's cliffs show ruddiest red between
Sap-saturated trees of greenest green.
They were indeed an Ocean-haunting brood,
Brine-breasting till it seemed their very blood
Ran pulsing with the spirit of the Sea,
As restless and exuberant and free!
His Father, with that Ocean-love uncloyed,
A lovelier smile than Ocean's had decoyed
From roving raptures of its wide wild life—
Sheet-anchored to the shore by Child and Wife.
Her and this youngling and two born before,
Roaming in quest of means to roam no more,
To that far northern port at last he bore:
There swallowed down his sailor-scorn of trade;
And something more than competence had made
From calcined kelp, and that free-splitting stone
Which in sea-depths or silent cliffs, unknown
Ten thousand centuries, unquarried lay
Stored up and fashioning for the future beat
And ceaseless tramp of busy millions' feet
In that enormous World-Mart far away;
But most from fisheries, filling all the bays
With ruddy shifting sails in sun or haze,
When rippling loud, with myriad gleam and glance
And rustling shiver o'er its wide expanse,

The liquid mass of seething Ocean seemed
Quickened to silvery life that one way streamed.

II.

Such sights and sounds inspired the growing Boy
With wondering exultation; and the joy
Of deeper thought and loftier feeling lent
To the mere gladness of temperament.
But books and fancy and old fishers' tales
Of glorious climes beyond these mists and gales
Kept his young heart too restlessly alive
With impulses resistless, such as drive
That insect-dragon scaly-winged to strive
And struggle through his chasmed channel's mud,
And reckless dash into the splendour-flood,
The new wide pool of light he feels and sees;
Such longings, as, when Summer's searching heats
Find out the butterflies in their retreats,
They yearn with, till, unvexed by any breeze,
The velvet-winged ones at her sweet command,
Sole, or in slow-revolving twos and threes,
Float in a crimson flutter through the land.
Thus the Boy fevered till his sire's consent
He gained to gratify his natural bent
Towards sailor life, and follow o'er the main,
Although the favourite son, his brethren twain.
So, freed from schools and tasks, all hopeful glee,
Away he went at twelve years old to Sea.

III.

But what preceptor like the mighty Ocean
To kindle thought and manifold emotion?

Majestic in its every form,
Stupendous calm or terror of the storm;
For ever to the dullest sense
A symbol of Omnipotence;
Yet like that Oriental notion,
That Deity of old devotion,
Omnipotence so lightly roused to ire,
And fickle as a flame of fire.

And with this fierce Sublimity, despite
The terrors of its treacherous might,
Its ruthless rage or sleek perfidious play,
As 'twere with some tremendous beast of prey
Half-tamed, the Sailor lives from day to day,
Lives cautiously familiar, hour by watchful hour
For ever in its presence—in its power.

But what a hardy pride his bosom warms
The while he runs the gauntlet through the storms,
Playing with such a foe in wary strife
A match whereof the forfeit is his life,
The gain, more than his own, another's pelf;
With such apparent odds against himself,
The seeming desperation of the game
Hardens the coarser soul it cannot tame
Into a blind oblivion of the morrow,
A stoic mirth that laughs at vice and sorrow.
While he of nobler mind and loftier aim
Is nursed by consciousness of danger, still
Escaped by foresight or subdued by skill,
Into a calm unboastful strength of will,
A sober self-reliance, firm and grave;
And feels as o'er vast Ocean's baffled wave

Triumphantly he steers from clime to clime
Elate with something of its own sublime.

IV.

And many a vacant hour, on many a theme,
Our thoughtful Sea-boy found to muse or dream;
Those vigils which the sailor needs must keep
In the sky-girt seclusion of the Deep.
Oft when the playful billows, lightly curled,
Run past the ship, and quiet seems as sleep,
The lone retreat that roams about the world—
That white-winged monastery moving still
Of rugged celibates against their will.
Or when in darkness, towards her goal unseen,
On moonless midnights mournfully serene,
She seems, as by some instinct, self-inspired,
Still pressing on her eager quest untired;
While, the obscurely-branching clouds between,
Crossed stays and braces—silent rocking spars
Seem mingling dimly with the dancing stars!
Or when, if steady-breathing trade-winds blow,
No shift of sails for days required, the crew
About the deck their quiet tasks pursue;
The heavy-dragging sail with rough-skilled hands
They patch, or splice the rope's stiff-plaited strands,
Or twirl with balanced backward steps and slow
The whizzing yarn, still pondering as they go
The long-drawn tale it types of blended joy and woe.
Or when, her topsails squared, with plunging ease,
The ship goes reeling right before the breeze;
And he who has the watch, relaxing now,
May lean and mark, with thoughts far elsewhere, how

The bowsprit weaves great circles on the sky—
Down sinks the deck with all its life—up fly
The wide horizon and dark Ocean's plain;
And then the buoyant deck ascends again:
While speeding after, ever and anon,
A huge blue watery hill comes roaring on,
Tiger-like, open-mouthed, in furious chase;
But near the flying stern with slackened pace,
And lowered crest, seems first disposed to see
What the strange winged Leviathan may be
That dares amid these boisterous brawlers stray;
And, fearful the encounter to essay,
Falls back in a broad burst of foam, and hissing slinks away.

V.

No lack of change each feeling to employ!
How his eyes widened with a solemn joy
When on some witching night
The jutting corner of the gibbous Moon—
A golden buoy
That weltered in a sable sea of cloud
(One level mass extending wide,
The firmament all bare beside)—
Shed an obscure and ominous light,
And fitful gusts scarce dared to moan aloud!
How was the heart-leap of his exultation
Sustained—sublimed by thrilled imagination
When, if a storm came veiling all the noon,
Old Ocean, rising in gigantic play,
Marshalled his multitudinous array
Of waves tumultuous into ridges gray,
And sent them whirling on their headlong way,

Host after host of crested cavalry
Charging in lines illimitable (urged
By trumpet winds whose deafening bray
Drowned the sharp hiss of myriad-lancing spray)
Into the horrible white gloom profound
That gathered, thickened all around!
And when the dimness of the squall was gone,
Haply, to some far region bound,
The great whale went majestically by—
Plunging along his mighty course alone,
Into the watery waste unknown;
Cleaving with calm, deliberate speed,
The battling waves he would not heed;
While at long intervals upthrown
Successive jets of spouted brine,
Decreasing with the distance, in a line,
Told how he ne'er diverged
An instant from his haughty path
Into the black heart of the tempest's wrath
That like dense smoke before him scowled,
For all the clamorous coil of winds that howled
And waves that leapt around him as he past
And flung his foamy banner to the blast.

VI.

Two scraps of boyish letters here may be
Thrown in, as roughly written home from sea.
“A noble sport—and my delight
That reefing topsails! just to make all right,
Ere the wind freshens to a gale at night.

See! clambering nimbly up the shrouds,
Go, thick as bees, the sailor-crowds;
The smartest for the post of honour vie
That weather yardarm pointing to the sky:
They gather at the topmast-head
And dark against the darkling cloud
Sidling along the foot-ropes spread:
Dim figures o'er the yardarm bowed,
How with the furious Sail, a glorious sight,
Up in the darkness of the Sky they fight!
While by the fierce encounter troubled
The heavy pitching of the Ship is doubled;
The big Sail's swelling, surging volumes, full
Of wind, the strong reef-tackle half restrains;
And like some lasso-tangled bull
Checked in its mid career of savage might
O'er far La Plata's plains,
It raves and tugs and plunges to get free
And flaps and bellows in its agony!
But slowly yielding to its scarce-seen foes
Faint and more faint its frenzied struggling grows;
Till, by its frantic rage at length
Exhausted, like that desert-ranger's strength,
Silent and still, it seems to shrink and close.
Then, tight comprest, the reef-points firmly tied,
Down to the deck again the sailors glide;
And easier now, with calm concentred force,
The Ship bounds forward on her lightened course.”

“Once, 'twas my watch below (worse luck!)
A sudden squall the vessel struck:
With half my clothes about me thrown
I rushed on deck; what havoc there!
The topsails from the bolt-ropes blown,
Topgallant-masts and royals gone,
And huddled sails and shattered spars
And tangled tackle everywhere;
While all amazed, our gallant tars
Stood at the sudden wreck aghast,
Nor seemed to heed the swift commands
The Captain shouted through the blast.
The heaving staysail swagged and swung
As from the strained jibboom it hung:
Of course with some sharp words addrest
To two or three, our smartest hands,
Forward I jumped to do my best.
They followed quick;—the lightest, I
The bowsprit's end could safest try;
We grasped the frail spar like grim death,
And shut our eyes and held our breath,
Clinging with tightened arms and knees
When o'er us dashed successive seas
And blinded, ducked, and drenched us, till
Seizing the chance of every lull
To look and lash and tug and pull,
We furled the sail and got it still;
Though no one knew as there we clung
How badly that jibboom was sprung.
But when I 'lighted on the deck
Shaking the water off, the good
White-headed Master, who had stood,
He told me since, in breathless mood

(His heart was in his mouth, he said,
While looking on, for very dread)
Threw his old arm about my neck,
‘God bless you!’ cried he, ‘my brave Son!
'Twas nobly, beautifully done!
The safety of my Ship and Crew
This blessed day—I swear 'tis true,
Is owing, under God, to you!’—

Mother! ten times the risk I'd run
To have such praise declared my due—
By such a gallant Seaman too!”

VII.

But with these Ocean-scenes the Sea-boy fed
On others fruitful both for heart and head;
Had glimpses of strange lands and men as strange;
Saw with each clime their minds and manners change:
Learnt how on God by various names they call,
While God's great smile shines equally on all;
Allah, unimaged, One; Brahma, Vishnu,
And Siva—triple-imaged One in Three;
Ormusd—‘Ahuramasda’—name profound—
‘Living I Am’—that Splendour! One of Two
At war—dark Ahriman his throne invading,
Piercing with Evil first the shell so sound,
His cosmic Egg-of-Order's perfect round;—
Manitou, mistlike with-his pipewhiff fading;—
Buddha—prince, mystic, moralist—at last
Made God for teaching that no God can be:—

Arab—Hindu—Red Indian—Jew—Parsee;
Chinese Joss-beater, little reverent, too—
That cracker-loving creature of the past—
Blithe spirit—soul a lifeless leaden cast;
Who with high-sublimated Gods, a store
(His Buddha—Fo; Confutzee's Tien; Taou
That pure God-Intellect of Lao-tse),
Breathes blinding fog—Convention-fixed of yore—
Of grossest superstition. With the rest,
The necromancing negro of the West,
The terrorist of Obeah. These he scanned;
And many a charm on each delightful land
Lavished by Art's or liberal Nature's hand:
Inhaled the breath that through dense mist distils
From green spruce woods and all the sea-air fills
With sweet sour odours from Canadian hills:
Dwelt with enraptured gaze on Hindostan's
Umbrageous bowers of spice and spreading fans,
And glistening ribbon-leaves and arching plumes;
Her starry palms and sacred peepuls set
On many-fingered roots, a snaky net;
Or propping their high-roofed magnificence
On pendent pillars; clustering gorgeous glooms
Whence bulbous domes of marble mosques and tombs
From that black-green deep-bosoming defence
Swell snow-white into burning atmosphere;
Or gilt pagodas rise above the shade
Like spires of thick cardoon-leaves closely laid,
All in blue tanks reflected, grave and clear.

VIII.

Or else that tropic Isle of Springs entranced
The lad—who revelled in its noonday glare
And silence deep, so tremulously hot—
So gently interrupted when it chanced
A sudden and soft fluttering in the air,
Like silverpaper rumpled, startlingly
Whispered some flying rainbow-fragment nigh
Darting in downy purple golden-shot;
Or, as suspended by its long bill's tip
On viewless wings a-quiver poised to sip
A crimson cactus-bloom—the honied dew
Which from that silky breast, so fit in hue
And texture fine, the airy suckling drew.
Safely that land of merry slaves he saw
Late ruined by a half-completed law;
When thoughtless theorists had flung aside
The evil bonds by ancient Custom tied,
Nor better bonds they wore themselves, supplied;
Had left to tyrannies of grovelling sense
The victims of their vague benevolence;
Left them still basely free from forethought, care,
And loftier loads the self-dependent bear;
Left them untaught to welcome Labour's pains,
More nobly slaves to all a freeman's chains;
To know, the highest freedom all can reach
Is but the highest self-restraint of each;
True freedom a serene and sober thing,
With loyalty to Right crowned inward King;
While laws of Duty made despotic, make
The only freedom mobs nor kings can break.

IX.

So four years passed: to him a happy time.
Meanwhile his brothers both in youthful prime
Had perished; one, the pest of that fair clime,
The demon lurking in its loveliness,
The yellow fever's swiftly-withering flame
Had caught up and consumed: and that distress
Scarce over, from the Storm-Cape tidings came
Doubtful, which soon for doubt left little room,
The other must have met as sharp a doom—
Himself, his ship and shipmates whirled away
In Ocean's wild tempestuous embrace
To some unknown unfathomable Tomb.
Then did the anguish-smitten Father pray
The youngest, last remaining of his race
To leave a calling where such risks were rife,
And live at home, his age's staff and stay.
So, with what grace he might, though grieving sore,
The stripling gave his dutiful consent
Henceforth to follow some pursuit ashore,
Where Death, the Shade that dogs the steps of Life,
Upon his prey though equally intent,
Because less startling, seems less imminent.

Canto the Second. Will-o'-wisp-chasing.

1, 2. Ranolf a student. Greek tragedians. 3. The Phædo and Socrates. 4. Distaste for narrow creeds. 5. Metaphysics; Locke gets rid of the secondary qualities of Matter; Berkeley of the primary, and Abstract Matter itself; Hume of Abstract Mind. 6. All anticipated by the Hindus—Locke and Berkeley by the Brahmin, Kapila; Hume by the Buddhist, Kasyapa. 7. Kant—makes ‘God’ a necessary inference—real only in the Mind; 8. Fichte (suggesting Carlyle)—a ‘Divine Idea’—the ‘Tendency making for Righteousness.’ Duty of the soul to harmonise with it. 9. This like later Buddhism. 10. Fichte's life a triumph of Soul over Matter.

I.

To tutors now and long-left tasks restored,
Our sea-emboldened, self-reliant Boy
Soon grew enamoured of his new employ.
And many things those tutors never meant
Into a mind of such inquiring bent
His classics and his metaphysics poured.
But most he loved, could ne'er enough adore
The Godlike spirit of that grand Greek lore
That first taught Man his glorious being's height;
Taught him to stand, the Universe before,

Erect in moral, intellectual might,
And brave, in strength of Soul, the adverse infinite.
How would their strains his kindling bosom warm,
Those daring darling Poets, who enshrined
The freest Spirit in the purest Form,
In matchless Beauty such consummate Mind.
How would he triumph with the Theban Maid
Who, in no armour but instinctive sense,
The panoply of conscious right, arrayed,
Her lofty sentiment her sole defence,
Risked all the murderous rage of tyrant force
To snatch a burial for a brother's corse;
Though all the gods—all worldly wisdom's saws,
All cherished loves and all Convention's laws,
Denounced herself and spurned her holy cause.
Antigone could teach him that the test
Of right and wrong lay in his own free breast;
That right was right, despite high-seated wrong
And throned Authority by Custom strong!
That Man of all external aid bereft,
Had still himself and staunch endurance left;
Could stand above all Circumstance elate
And trust high Nature in the fight with Fate.

II.

And when he read the agonizing cries
That vulture-tortured Giant in the skies
Utters in deathless and sublime despair,
Doomed for his love to Man that woe to bear;
And all the sad majestic converse, round
The pinnacles of Caucasus snow-crowned,
Swelling like solemn Music, and again

Dying along the illimitable air,
As, one by one, supernal visitants
Come floating up to watch the ghastly pants
And writhings of the Titan, and with vain
Compassion, taunts—temptations vainer still—
Assail his grand unconquerable Will,
And bid him break his voluntary chain,
Abandon Man, scorn that vicarious pain,
And hail the gloomy Tyrant's selfish reign;
When all the student's sense of justice rose,
Stirred by the dauntless Poet's great appeal,
In wrath against the author of such woes,
And his young heart would passionately feel
For the doomed donor of the god-wrung fire;
Think you he ne'er was tempted to inquire,
Was that outworn Olympian rule of Zeus
The only tyranny men called divine?
Was there no other nature-startling use
Of absolute power—no other punishment
Of love, inflicted on the innocent,
At which instinctive Justice would repine?

III.

But most his soul was wonderstruck to see
To what a height humanity could reach
In that divinest hemlock-drinker—he
Who welcomed Death less evil than the breach
Of fealty to his country's laws, or scant
Reliance on the faith he came to teach:
The truths his nature forced him to proclaim;
The necessary outcome of his frame,
Mental and moral—by the innate law

Of evolution for its excellence
Provided—as inevitable thence
As from the sap of each peculiar plant
The special blossom earth and air must draw;
Trust absolute in the perfect Power above;
His perfect goodness; and what these must prove
(For with the ill around, what other just
Conclusion could he reach, with such a trust?)
That sole relief of every human want,
Soother and solace of the general sigh—
The Soul's unbodied Immortality!

And where was ever a sublimer page
Than that which paints the God-sent Prophet-Sage
Cheerily urging with his latest breath
This lofty creed upon his weeping band
Of friends—his very gaoler too unmanned;
Then standing forth, and with dilating eyes
That look straightforward—bold and calm—‘bull-wise’
Into the dread Eternity so nigh,
With one libation to the gods on high,
Drinking the Elixir both of Life and Death!
And as the deadly influence upward stole
And sobs broke forth he could no more console,
Lifting the mantle from his failing sight,
Just ere his soaring spirit winged its flight,
To make with accents faint his last bequest—
While haply in those eyes supreme o'er pain
A moment's humorous glimmer shone again—
That votive cock to the medicinal God
Of herbs—his soul's last evidence to be

Of joy at shaking off this mortal clod,
And his triumphant gratitude attest
To one whose potent drug had set him free.

IV.

Well, the great Sea-Life; the quick-shifting crowd
Of Sects that showed the human Spirit down-bowed
With equal faith each sect before its Lord,
While each the others' equally ignored:
Then the Greek grandeurs where that Spirit was seen
Erect and self-dependent and serene;
All made the youth still less and less incline
To cramping creeds or any partial shrine.
His heart was but one endless protestation
Against the slightest shackles on free Thought:
Rather than not attain the end he sought,
His strong intolerant love of toleration,
His towering spirit of tyrannous liberty,
Had forced all mental bondslaves to be free.—
Then all for Nature! “She alone for me!”
“What”—he would cry in his impetuous style,
Climbing, perhaps, some mountain-peak the while,

“What need of Temples! All around,
Through Earth's expanse, through Heaven's profound,
A conscious Spirit beauty-crowned,
A visible glory breathes and breaks,
And of these mountains, moors and lakes
A Holiest of the Holies makes!
Above—around—where'er you be,
A true Shekinah shining see!

With ever-fuming Incense there
An Altar burns for praise and prayer!
Whence better to your ‘Lord of Love’
Can sorrow waft its wail above
Than from some desert-waste forlorn,
Where sadly, of all splendour shorn,
Creeps in the stilly-dripping Morn?
Where best, ye broken-hearted, groan
On ‘God’ for help but all alone
Where forests make their mighty moan?
Where best exult in heart-hushed praise
If not where hills their great tops raise
Majestic in the silent blaze
Of Sunset over Ocean's haze?
What! shall the Spirit only draw
Near that unknown and nameless Awe
Where, beauteous though it be, there stands
Some puny work of human hands?
But I, O mystic Might! no less
As thy all-hallowed home will bless
Sublimest Nature's loveliness!
But I will dare, O Power Divine!
Revere One true transcendent Shrine,
This flashing Universe of Thine!”

V.

Now with uprooting Metaphysics toyed
The youth—their tangled subtleties enjoyed;
A wary old Professor was his guide,
Who welcomed every light from every side;
Yet most—such sad mistrust experience taught
Of plausibly profoundest human thought—

On common sense and mother-wit relied;
One, who—so high seemed Nature—Man so low—
Felt dwarfed to humbleness he scorned to show;
Yet, that their dwarfishness men would not feel,
Moved to fresh scorn he could not quite conceal.
He would have let the learner-lad confine
His tasks to careworn, truth-adoring Locke;
The lad would learn what ‘paying out more line’
Where Locke had cast it, led to,—solid rock,
Mud, quicksand, or the fathomless profound.
The more line ran, more depth there seemed to sound.
It took him, as you know, to that rare creed,
Etherial, beautiful—the fertile seed
Matured by Locke, our goodly Bishop sowed
Afresh, and reared into rich thought that glowed
Heavy with ears of amaranthine gold
That yet may yield their glorious hundred-fold.

Spirit was crowned when Soldier-sage Descartes
Plato's ‘Innate Ideas’ anew sustained;
But Hobbes—Gassendi—proved Ideas in part
Are through the Senses by Experience gained.
Locke to full growth their treacherous sapling trained.
“All possible ideas are mere sensations,
Or our reflections on them,” Locke insists;
“But half the first are Sense's own creations,
No faithful types of what in truth exists;
Not in the rose the red, nor in light-rays
Its texture splits, but in the eyes that gaze;
Not in the fire, but in our frames, the heat;
Not in the honey, but our tongues, the sweet;
Not in the thunder, but our ears, the roar;
These are impressions on the brain—no more:

But form, solidity, extension, power
To move or rest, are Matter's genuine dower,
Her real outside existence.” “Nay—pursue
Your doubt,” cries Berkeley; “probe them through and through,
And you will find these qualities you flatter
Yourself you prove essential in this Matter,
No more substantial than its red and blue.”

And then the mighty mitred Analyst,
Silk-aproned subtle-tongued Psychologist,
Thinker by few believed, by all beloved,
With frankest power “unanswerably proved,
What no man in his senses can admit,”
(A phrase of little truth and not much wit)
Proved that all things we hear, see, feel around,
Have no such base as Matter—nay, no base
Or being at all but Spirit—their sole ground.
Forces are they, from Infinite Mind proceeding,
Spiritually active, wheresoe'er it be,
On finite mind to print, in order due,
Sensations, not deceptive nor misleading;
But spiritual coin as spiritual Coiner, true,
And real with Spirit's sole reality.
So Berkeley said and proved his flawless case.

But Hume came sliding in with smiling face,
Veiling the grimmest strength in easy grace;
The pleasant playful Giant—gentle Chief
Of sceptics, dealing blows without a sign
Of effort—slashing with a sword so fine—
Killing with lightning-touches bright and brief;
So wise, so good; whose adversaries found

His silken glove a Cestus iron-bound,
When staggering all the gladiator press
He proved—or seemed to prove—to their distress
And ours, that Thought itself and Consciousness
Had no such base as Mind—which only meant
Trains of impressions and ideas that went
And came in nothing—neither more nor less;
For no recipient spirit could be perceived,
And Matter was already gone and shent;
And he had settled to his own content
(To such a dogma, ye who can, consent!)
No Cause did ever yet produce Effect
However Custom may the two connect.
Therefore for pictures we within us find,
No Power without—above—of any kind
Need be, or could be, as their cause assigned.
So must we Matter, Mind, God, Soul, alike—
As metaphysical abstractions scout—
Out of the ranks of real existence strike:
And yet as Mind and Matter both, without
Or spite of Reason, must be still believed—
Nature took care of that—that much achieved—
The only clear conclusion was dim Doubt.

VI.

Thus Locke by Berkeley—Berkeley thus by Hume,
Was pounced on in retributive swift doom,
Hand over hand, as children play, so pat,
Each crushing his great predecessor flat:
So swiftly hurried down the eddying tide
Of speculation which began to flow
In the far East three thousand years ago

When doubting dusky Sages threw aside
Their faith in those symbolic wheelspoke arms
And double heads of deities of Ind;
And some mild paddy-fed pale-blooded crew
Of subtle theorists argued nought was true,
Nought real but Brahma—him in whom inhere
All magic-lantern shadows that appear
As living shapes in this illusive sphere.
Then Brahma's essence, subtilised and thinned,
In Kapila's self-styled ‘Perfect Wisdom’ grew
To Absolute Spirit—Thinking Substance pure
And abstract as that pure unworldly Jew,
The spiritual Spinoza, ever drew.

But earlier still, in wild recoil more sure
From Brahmin tyranny of creed and caste,
The o'er-refining Orient fancy passed
To dreams the maddest ever Reasoning spun,
In that high-moralled faith that still has charms
(Because its founder's self, made God, replaced
And vivified so soon for vulgar taste
The No-God he had taught) to sway such swarms
Dusk Aryan and Turanian tawny-skinned;
That fullest-millioned Faith beneath the Sun,
Which Sakya Muni—princely eremite—
First saddened into—sickened with the sight
Of sorrow and pain inseparable seeming
From life—his own a pleasure-sated blight
With high desire forlornly through it gleaming;
So with a proud deliberate despair
Conceived his monstrous method of redeeming,

By guiding, souls back to their primal night
Of non-existence; which his pupil and friend
Kas-yapá teaches they already share,
Therein are based—begin—and ought to end;
Nor rests, like Hume, content in doubt to pause,
But from his metaphysic ‘Basket’ draws
Negation of all spirit—God—first cause—
Brahma or Absolute Being; all and each—
Creator and created—matter—mind—
Alike chimeras; wisdom's highest reach
To know this nothingness; the soul's true aim
To lose existence and partake the same;
Extinguished then, with consciousness consigned
To darkness—blown out like a taper's flame,
To enter so ‘Nirvana’—there to be
Absurdly blest with blank Nonentity.

VII.

Air-lording Allemannia! vast and dim
The cloud-racks next our Aeronaut must skim!
Say rather, leave, a Reaper, worn-out fields
Of Thought for golden crops thy culture yields,
Though hedged with worse than Indian orange-thorns—
Sharp subtleties for—Doubt's intrusive horns?—
As Locke's Sensation-creed, worked out, had brought
Matter and Spirit both alike to nought,
Did not those soaring Germans reinstate
Inborn ideas—and hence a Soul innate?
Did not great Kant in pedant's jargon shew
How, paramount within the human Mind—

Not from Sensation nor Experience gained—
Ideas, the fruit of the ‘Pure Reason’ reigned?
As, from this fount Truths Mathematic, so
From this—called Conscience—Moral Truths must flow
By mere necessity? while those two facts,
Conditions fixed, wherein ‘Pure Reason’ acts—
The Soul—the Universe—but presuppose
And force you to the grand Idea behind
Whence both must spring, wherein are both combined—
To God—the source of all that thinks or knows,
All Being's boundless origin and close?—
Did not poor Faith, from shift to shift doubt-prest
Find in that ‘Reason Pure’ peace—refuge—rest?
Trusting both scoff and sceptic-proof to be,
In pachydermatous Philosophy
So puzzling, panoplied? and might not she,
Man's deathless Hope, in such a tangle rude
Of prickly briars of Logic hid away,
Rest like the Beauty in the long-charmed wood,
Serene—secure—inviolable? Say,
Did no great Truth obscure and latent lie
In all that chaff of dialectics dry—
A chrysalis (like that with reeled-off floss,
Bared of its dress, all amber gleam and gloss,
The careful schoolboy hides in homely bran)
Whence a new Psyche should emerge for Man?
Like Psyche's self, say,—from blue Italy
Prepared to cross the rude rough-handling sea,
Laid up in wood and iron, sound and safe
In naked beauty from all chance of chafe;
So closely presses round her spiritual face
And limbs of tender marble and white grace,
The hard-caked sawdust of her packing case.

But, O conclusion lame and impotent!
O rage of vigorous reasoning vainly spent!
Those fixed Ideas—inseparably blent
With all the rest—Time—Space and Cause—'tis plain,
Though notions connate with the nascent brain,
Have in essential fact no solid ground—
Only within the human soul are found;
Though necessary bases of our thought
Are from no prototypes beyond us brought!
That ‘God’ is but a sort of ghost confined
To haunt the shadowy chambers of the mind!
As if within a glass-roofed palace grew
Some strange grand Tree of mystic shape and hue,
With various virtues wondrously arrayed—
With mighty fronds and majesty of shade,
And towering crest sufficiently sublime;
Within those vitreous walls compelled, no doubt,
By nature's laws luxuriantly to sprout,
But with no fellow—no resemblance known,
Or able to exist in any clime
'Mid the green glories of the world without;
A most magnificent, yet monstrous cheat,
Proud overgrowth of artificial heat,
And that peculiar edifice alone;
No shade or shelter offering when you ply
Your weary way beneath the naked sky!

“Why, if this God's a product of our own,
Which ends in us, though there perforce it breeds,
A doubtful light which but to darkness leads,”
Said Ranolf's Guide—“what waste of toil and time
These more than acrobatic feats to climb
Such crags precipitous, such slippery heights,

Where no rewarding view our toil requites;
No vision of the City long-desired,
Though brief as that in Moslem myths—perchance
Seen standing—sudden—silent—sunrise-fired
Before the desert-wanderer's awestruck glance;
Far stretching multitudinous array
Of gilded domes and snowy minarets,
And tiers of long arcades rich-roofed with frets
More delicate than frostwork! then again
Gone—vanished! and a hundred years in vain
Resought, but gladdening nevermore the day.
Not e'en such glimpse, O mighty Kant!—at most
When we have reached your height at so much cost,
In densest fog we see a finger-post
You say directs us to that City fair,
But is no proof of any City there!
Some letters on its arms obscurely seen
Your spectacles discover; what they mean
In worse than three-tongued wedge-rows sealed up fast,
We have to take from you on trust at last.”

VIII.

Whose reveries then could our vexed Student lure?
Whom sought he next?—

That lofty Spirit and pure
The march majestic and the genuine ring
Of whose high eloquence on one high theme,
How best aloft the expanded Soul may wing
Her way, and best sustain her flight supreme—
Had all the warranty a life could bring,

The faithful mirror of his faith—sublime
In self-dependent stateliness severe,
And steadfast single eminence of aim;—
Fichte—whose name recalls a dearer Fame—
A Power intenser—trenchant—towering—true;
In Custom's ocean-strata prompt and prime
Impassioned insight's dynamite-mines to spring;
Of Spirits in unspiritual days who cling
To Spirit—stanchest if the most austere;
Right sympathiser though to satire wedded;
Rich lode of gold in rugged quartz imbedded!—
He whose capacious soul's ascending Sphere
Oft looms obscure while flashing brightness through
Dull mists it kindles till they disappear;
Who, rolling back the ponderous stone of Time,
Makes the dead Past, upstarting clear in fine
Fork-lightnings of Truth's poesy, outshine
The living Present, whose loud shams—with might
And hammer like his own white-knuckled Thor's,
And scorn that pities while it most abhors,
And humour laughing at his scorn's wild flight,—
His rough right hand was ever clenched to smite!—
Fichte—great voice to rouse, great heart to cheer!
This greater could not hear it and not leap
In unison, ‘Deep calling unto Deep;’
Could not from such a credence and career
Withhold the dower of his undying praise;
Which saw therein the far-reflected gleam
Of high-endeavouring old illustrious days;
Heard solemn echoes or the etherial flow
Of Attic pacings of the Portico
And whispers from the groves of Academe,

Where Truth alone by sages world-renowned
Was sought, and made Life's rule at once when found;—
Fichte struck out once more for truths that shine
Instinctive and immediately divine.
In consciousness is all of God we know;
But consciousness proclaims Him; neither dim
Nor doubtful He; all Being's source and stream;
Nature exists in us, and we in Him.
For ‘Me’ and ‘Not-Me’—Universe and Soul
Are one—not two—and Consciousness the whole:
Nature its passive, Soul its active side;
In Consciousness are both contained—allied;
Nature—a picture by that ‘Me’ supplied—
A glorious web which from fine stuff within
Itself the Spider Consciousness can spin.
So all is Spirit—Matter there is none
But part and product of the Soul alone.

And what ideal does Consciousness proclaim
As all we know of Him whom ‘God’ we name?—
That active principle, which clearly seen
Is working out, whatever intervene,
The triumph in the Universe and Man,
Of all that's useful, beautiful, and good;
That Force which forwards its consummate plan
Of progress endless towards the perfect Day
Of moral Order's universal sway;
And to the Soul above all tumult cries
Of one high Duty still to be pursued,—
With that ‘Divine Idea’ to harmonise
The Will, and all its faculties subdued
Into devout co-operative mood,
Press forward freely to the ennobling prize.

IX.

High thoughts! yet haply Hindu still; so like
The course—nor much unlike the goal—to those
The later Buddhists for the soul propose,
Dropping the dreary nihilistic phases
Of Sakya's faith too purely insane to strike
The fancy of the myriads, else its foes;
Backsliding into healthier dreams and brighter,
In Burmah or Nepaul; or such as lie
Obscurely hidden in the mystic cry,
The shaveling in red robes and yellow mitre,
In snowy Thibetan devoutly raises
At Lama-ridden Lhassa, when he phrases
In one short shibboleth his prayers and praises:
“Gem in the Lotus-flower, Amen!” whereby
He breathes his soul's desire to wing its flight
Through Æons of blest Being—height o'er height,
Till evermore suffused with purer light
It merge—from death, disease, old age and need,
And all the griefs of gross existence freed,—
Perfect, in Buddha's Soul—its boundless meed—
Absorbed in that All-perfect Infinite!—
A heterodox ‘Nirvana,’ worthier far
By ages of vast virtue to be won;
No ‘taper-flame blown out’—a blissful star
Lost in the splendour of the noonday sun.

X.

“True,” thought our friends, “this Man was true, indeed;
A noble Teacher of a noble Creed!

Yet, to persuade us how the Soul may climb
Triumphant o'er material Space and Time,
Stronger than all that dialectic strife,
His most convincing logic was his life.
Of truths the stern Philosopher had taught
Proof most profound, perhaps, the Patriot brought,
When, finishing his last great fight for God,
And many a rapt impassioned period,
Down from his desk the mighty Master came,
Unmoved by murmur low, or plaudit loud,
Or fervent blessing from the student-crowd;
And left the loved arena of his fame
With shouldered musket in the ranks to stand,
And fall or conquer for his Father Land.”

Canto the Third. From Wisp to Morass.

1. Schelling's ‘Absolute’—a blind power working in Nature, conscious only in Man. 2. Panatheistic and Buddhist. 3. Hegel makes the ‘Absolute,’ a Unity being evolved from contradictory principles existing as the ‘Conditioned.’ 4. A glimpse of his alleged meaning.

5. Result of Metaphysics based on Abstract Thought alone. Behind the ‘Apparent’ must be a ‘Real,’ and (6) as wondrous. The Universe—why to be limited to or by our perceptions of it? 7. The transcendentalists throw no light on this ‘Real;’ only prove it exists; and that we cannot fathom it. 8. So to Comte and Positivism. Denial of all Immaterial Existence. 9. Comte's new Religion.

I.

Then Schelling plies the metaphysic ball,
Which Reason's racket still will strike aloft
To overfly Sensation's bounding wall,
Though to the ground a thousand times it fall.
Those two Ideas we prate about so oft,
The Soul—the Universe—are really two,
And are identified—O, not in you,

Nor any finite Consciousness so small,
But only in the Absolute—the All.
Spirit is Matter that itself surveys;
And Matter, Spirit's undiscerning phase;
They are the magnet's two opposing poles,
And each the other balances—controls:
Both in a centre of indifference rest,
Which their essential being is confest:
As in the magnet's every point—we see
In all the works of Nature just these three;
But that which bounds them all and each degree,
The Absolute—the Magnet's self—must be,
Except at Being's most exalted height—
Impersonal—unconscious—infinite;
For God—that Absolute—still strives in vain,
In Nature's blind inferior works; nor can
In any form Self-Consciousness attain,
Save in the highest reasoning power of Man,
That central point, which Soul and Nature gain;—
Unconscious else the Universal Pan.

II.

Short comment made that old Idoloclast:
“Behold, then, three-and-twenty centuries passed,
The stately Ship of Western Thought at last,
Striking and stranded on the barren shore
Where struck that Buddhist bark so long before,
Left high and dry with all its phantom freight;
Thither impelled by that satiric fate
That dogs our intellectual pride, and brings
Shipwreck with its conviction shallow and vain,
That 'tis a storm-proof Cruiser, this poor brain,

Built, rigged, and manned to circumnavigate
The rondure vast of all existing things.
So Schelling digs where Kas-yapá had dug;
Magniloquent, yet microscopic elf,
So makes all Nature but the high-plumed hearse
Of God gone dead; so, whipping out his cord,
O metaphysical and monstrous Thug!
Strangles Creation's soul out; in a word,
Makes, while he feigns to flout Man's pride of Self,
That Self sole Mind-Life in the Universe.

“Alas! my Ranolf, were it wrong to call
This the most drear of metaphysic dreams—
The most revolting, mean result of all?
The Being, then, of highest worth it seems,
Which that World-ghost, that blind and senseless force
Evolves in its uncaused unconscious course,
Is but this inefficient soul of ours—
The one God, Man! for all his boasted powers,
Dubbed truly by that wanton wittiest Greek,
‘Clay-puppet, poor—ephemeral—wingless—weak!’
Is He the sole Intelligence? can he
The crown and climax of all Being be
Throughout that million-starred immensity?
Prove it by demonstration flawless, strong;
The wild conclusion proves some premiss wrong;
Absurd, as if those dwellers by old Nile
Had, in unsymbolled Scarab-worship vile,
Crowned with a beetle their great Pyramid—
The Monarch Builder out of sight and hid.”

III.

To mystic depths and mistier. Hegel shrouds
Himself and Truth in denselier-rolling clouds,
Like Arab genie sore opprest in fight;
His splendour flashes through redoubled night.
Thoughts are the same as Things; and what is true
Of one must be so of the other too.
No base but Thought the Mind's conceptions claim,
And your ‘external Objects’ have the same;
In Thought what proves consistent, rational, sound,
Must then in Things be Real and Actual found.
But Reason says: Your Absolute enfolds
All Actuals; cannot be at all, or holds
Good—Evil—utter contraries in one—
Mutual destructives in Its union.
Therein encounter, coexist, embrace,
Flat contradictions which whene'er you trace
The bounds of Being, stare you in the face!
Nay, Being's self therein, a balance lies
Of yoked yet suicidal contraries:
For Non-Existence, as a Thought, must be
Like pure Existence, a Reality:
While of pure abstract Being, uncombined
With qualities of any form or kind,
Nought can we know or predicate aright:
So Being falls into Non-Being's plight;
Each dies—revives—becomes its opposite.—
The positive and negative descried
In all things are such discords so allied.
For each Idea or Object (which you please,
Both are the same) evolves itself like these;

But these destroy and shut each other out;
A negative is all they bring about;
Still as the Idea is there and must remain,
That negative must be denied again.
As Abstract Space, for instance, cannot be
Conceived as bounded or as boundless either;
Yet must be one to be at all, you see,
Then cannot be at all, because 'tis neither;
A negative which meets denial clear,
For Space is something after all—and here.
That last negation, then, the Idea revives,
And subtler complex Being to it gives
In the ‘Conditioned’ where alone it lives.
Those magnet-poles, the two extremes, are gone,
And in the central point survive alone;
Object and Subject, Universe and Soul,
Are in that centre, one and real, and whole;
Each in itself a nothing we may call,
But their relation to each other—all.
Like alkali and acid, they attract
Each other, meet, and perish in the act—
The effervescence rests the only fact.
So the ‘Becoming’—the immediate spring
From Nought to Somewhat, is the vital thing;—
“Well, well!” broke out our student here, “at least
It cannot be denied this great High Priest
Of metaphysic Mysteries, has the wit,
The ant-lion boasts who scoops his cone-shaped pit
In subtlest sand, and there securely hides;
And when into the trap the victim slides,
And strives in vain to climb the slipping sides,
Down, deeper down, the crafty digger goes,
And o'er his prey such blinding dust-showers throws,

He triumphs quickly, and the intruder draws
Bewildered into those remorseless jaws.”
But when unflinching Hegel flatly laid
The axiom down he would not have gainsaid,
Disdaining compromise—dispute—or flout
(Settling so coolly Hamlet's staggering doubt)
“To Be is Not-to-be—and Not-to-be
To Be—agree to that, or disagree,
'Tis Logic's first great axiom, and most true!”
What could a youth with risible organs do,
At this, Philosophy's last grand exploit,
But ‘ding the book the distance of a quoit’
Away—and with a shout of laughter loud,
Light a cigar, and blow—as clear a cloud?—

IV.

“Bide a wee!” cried his Tutor, “my lad!”—with his cautious, sarcastic old tongue—
“There's a question I'd have you to ask, as you hirple these mystics among,
When certain, quite certain you're right, ‘But suppose after all I am wrong?’—
Say that Matter is nothing but Spirit, as Berkeley has best of all taught,
All the ‘Things’ we call ‘outward’—Ideas; why, the Universe then is all Thought;
And its Laws are but forms of our Thinking; then surely Itself may be nought
But the image and reflex of Mind; and the Two may be held to keep pace

In their manifestations and march—all their movements in Time and in Space—
And as One run together their changeful, developing, infinite race!
Say the Universe still is in growth; still for Æons on Æons must beat
Its great wings towards an Eyrie afar; that a Cosmos as yet incomplete,
Towards a Perfect as yet unconceived must the whirling Infinitude fleet!
Then the Mind that conception would reach when the Universe reaches the fact.—
Now through Being, organic, unorganised,—mark how one Law may be tracked:
In its innermost depths internecine two absolute contraries act—
Two principles, neither allowing the other alone to exist,
Into either the other still shifting, alternately sighted and missed,
(Like the eyes at once open and shut in that trick-begot face of the Christ)
But for ever evolving a third—a Unity yet unattained.—

Well, this ‘Notion’ of Being's high working, a Thought by abstraction though gained
From Actual Things, was the Thought from the first that causatively reigned
In the Absolute Essence; compelled their concretion; still sways them all through;
Nay, by Hegel on high dialectic is throned in such royalty true,
All progressions of Nature and Mind must precisely accord with it too!
'Tis the mystical tune they must dance to; like sunny-haired rows

Of Hamelin children must follow wherever its melody flows,
And our Hegel—our Piper sublime, transcendentally capering goes!

Then, as one vast Idea there may be which our present conception transcends,
And to realise, organise which the whole Universe struggles and tends;
Of Ideas that are swarming subordinate, each its own contraries blends
In the group it forms round it as central true type and Ideal designed
To be reached by their organisation when perfect, each after its kind:
Which type through their points the most opposite, not the most like, we must find.
And as Life-groups from balancing discords must physical concords contrive,
So may Moral antagonist Forces be destined to struggle and strive,
Till exalted, transfigured at last in a higher new nature they thrive!
Do not Passion and Principle, Impulse and Duty, so act in the soul?—
May not Matter and Spirit, Good—Ill, so be working—all parts as the whole—
Nay, our Infinite-Finite at war have some Peace unimagined for goal?—
—What! the Actual then, the ‘perceived,’ will not to accordance be brought
With what Hegel conceives! nor the Universe show itself working or wrought
On a ‘Notion’ so subtle, you say!—Well, 'tis some consolation—it ought!

For with ‘Thought’ for First Cause, 'tis a bolder and grander conception at least
Than the harmony clashed out by Atoms, that gift from the primitive East;
The Concordia discors, how mystic! which haply the sadness increased
Of the cheeriness forced and forlorn so cherished by Horace of old,
As—his head early grey—the sleek sensitive Poet, close-wrapping the fold
Of his toga with sunset blood-stained, down the Appian dreamily strolled.
And though Hegel affirm contradictions in terms that each other repel,
Since their high reconciling Idea no Reason at present can tell,
When the last is discovered, why—Logic and Language may reach it as well.
And suppose, in his ‘Immanent Reason,’ as Cause all these wonders behind,
But ‘Intelligent Infinite Will,’—may not Hegel and . . . much he opined
Ages hence be a Lord and a Law to maturer and mightier Mind?

V.

“But now consider. What at last remains
From all that toil of transcendental brains?
If, like the bristled monster-minims seen
To jerk and writhe and wriggle goggle-eyed

Within the lighted circle on the wall
Thrown from the water-drop compressed between
Glass plates by microscopic lantern-sheen,
These crabbed and cribbed philosophers go near
To craze, because the Apparent's magic sphere
So hems them in; and Hegel above all
Seemed, like the fabled Scorpion girt with fire,
With his own logic-nippers to inflict
A bite that killed himself, in mad desire
And effort to escape from bonds so strict—
That radiant round of the ‘Phenomenal,’
And dive into the depths that lie beyond;—
What then?—that grand mysterious Outside,
That Ocean of their soundings frantic, fond,
Is there—there still, and cannot be denied:
Howe'er the Thing we may define or name,
Whatever dim solutions we disclaim,
The ‘Unapparent’ still exists the same!

“For granting it be made by reasoning plain
That all the fair impressions on the brain
Are not mere pictures of such things around
Where no real types precisely like are found,
But from those decorating Senses gain,
In passing through them, all the dædal dress
Of qualities we fancy they possess,—
‘Not in the rose the red—nor in light-rays
Its texture splits, but in the eyes that gaze;
Not in the thunder—honey—fire, the roar,
The heat or sweetness we perceive; all these
Lie in the Sense that hears, tastes, feels or sees;
Well, it remains as certain as before
The causes of these feelings lie without,

Beyond us still; for who pretends to doubt
We do not, cannot of ourselves excite
All these sensations? and still less the play
Of keen impressions that by night and day
In selfsame order, sequence, and array
Reach other minds by millions? There must be
A something causing all we feel and see.
What Things are in Themselves, though none can say,
They still have in themselves—for base and stay,
Some pure, essential, true Reality.”

VI.

“But tell me now,” said Ranolf, “by what right
Can they assert that unimagined sphere
Of Causes is not varied, powerful, bright
And beautiful as aught we see or hear
Or any way perceive within the Mind?
‘Nature in her insentient solitude
Must as eternal Darkness be defined,
Eternal Silence.’ Wherefore thus conclude?
The Light and Sound are in ourselves, say you;
The Darkness—Silence then should be so too!
The last should our alternatives alone
Be held—not Nature's—when the first are gone.
Say Sound and Light are hers, but only heard
Or seen by us when certain nerves are stirred.
'Tis hard to think, were all Mankind destroyed,
This glorious World would be a dumb black void!—
But those mysterious Agents that can start
Sensations thus in human consciousness,

Would still, if that had vanished, be no less
Active, impulsive, wonderful, divine;
And might at least convey, somehow impart
To other Souls whom other organs bless,
Say (for their nature none of course can guess)
Lights gorgeous, jewel-tinted, more than shine
For us—for our beholding all too fine;
And melodies of such entrancing tone
As would outravish all to mortal music known!

“Surely no sober reason would pretend
To make the wondrous Universe depend
On our perceptions—there begin and end?
Must Senses like our own exhaust its powers?
May there not be more Senses too than ours?
Does the Sun cease to be a Sun, and die,
Hurled from his throne in yon majestic Sky,
Whene'er the Worm that grooves the flowery fret
Of pulpit-work—or Spider at his net
On some rose-knotted oak-carved canopy
Within a great Cathedral's gloom and grace—
May lose the few faint rays it feels through panes
That serve to bound, e'en while they brighten, all
Its tiny being's scant-accorded space;
Dim rays half quenched in that transparent pall,
Yet rainbow-rich with saintly blazonry
And dusky with a wealth of Angel-stains?”

VII.

Said that old hoary Candour, “Haply true
Your notion there! Yet what have we to do
With possible Souls you guess at, not our own,

Or powers of Nature wholly hid from view?
Who can assent to or deny what you
May dream of in the Utterly Unknown?—
But do they open—these Idealists—
Any grand oriel, loop or sight-hole new,
That Unapparent Realm may shine into;
Through which the Eternal Radiance may be seen
Behind the glory-dusked Phantasmal Screen,
Our heavenly-stained Cathedral Universe?—
Well, I must hold their chance thereof the worse
From their inveterate resolve to find
That Universe—all Being that exists—
Wrapt in and rounded by the human Mind.

“Yet at lowest their gossamer frail filligree
Of Abstractions but half comprehensible serves
To prove—though this visible Universe be
But ‘sensations,’—mere pictures impressed on the nerves
Through the Consciousness flitting in shadow and sheen;
Yet beyond or behind it must still be implied
A Something, more real and as wondrous, Unseen,
Where the Causes that call up the pictures abide:
And to prove, by their failure, a limited brain
Like the human—the Finite—can never expound
That Reality fully, but struggles in vain
Either Infinite Nature or Being to sound;
Either Matter or Spirit to reach through—to round,
Or their Essence or Origin fathom—explain!”

VIII.

So Ranolf leaves the crew who strive to rear
Truth's Palace on the clouds of Abstract Thought;

Tries those who on the concrete base have wrought
Of solid Fact we see and feel and hear:

“Come France the fine-idealled! a Wanderer aid!
Surely in any faith in France essayed
For Man's high wants provision will be made!
Did not, to God's great glory—or his own—
Pious Voltaire erect a church of stone?
Pious Rousseau foredamn or save his soul
As he might hit or miss a cork-tree's bole?
Pious pure tiger-monkey, Robespierre,
Most tender-conscienced bloodhound, slavering there,
Find soulless Man no workable machine,
And bay for ‘God’ to back his guillotine?
Elijah-mantled in silk-coat sky-blue,
The powdered Prophet ostrich-plumed anew,
Upholding to his sanctimonious nose,
So keen to scent out blood, a fullblown rose,
Proclaimed his condescending cool decree
Which deigned to bid his ‘Supreme Being’ be!—
Surely this novel nostrum, all the rage,
Of Comte, sleek-hatted and sleek-coated Mage,
Cherry-cheeked, dapper-souled, most dainty Sage,
The human heart's deep yearnings will assuage,
And steep in light and truth a woeworn Age!

“But O, what champion for the eternal fray
Is this, whose tactics are to run away,
Ignore the fight or yield without a blow!
Is this ‘Philosophy’—to shirk—forego
All—best worth knowing—men most burn to know—
This all we gain, O dapper One—from thee?
‘Appearances—the facts we feel and see—

Sensuous impressions—these we know alone;
Know even of these but the relations shown
Between them; where they are alike, indeed,
And in what settled order they proceed.
Such sequences—resemblances—we call,
When constant,—Laws of Things Phenomenal.
As for the Cause directing each event,
'Tis but the one that next before it went;
Like antecedent brings like consequent;
And nothing supernatural ever breaks
The natural course the ordered current takes;
The endless train of pictures backward goes.
But their essential nature—whence they rose—
How first were caused or wherefore—no one knows,
Has means or powers for knowing. Hence we deem
All supersensuous notions a mere dream!
And all religious dogmas, darkly bred
From mumbo-jumbo worship—Fetish dread;
And all Theologies that thence were spun
From Gods the Many up to God the One;
Expanding by the creature's natural law
Of growth, still checked by less and less of awe,
To subtler metaphysical conceits,
(The grown-up Child's still self-deluding cheats)—
All these are shadows of the cruder brain,
Fancies the fullgrown Man must needs disdain;
Gods—God—or Spirit—Nature's Abstract Whole—
Her Plastic Force, or Vegetative Soul,
All but ingenious whims of minds half-taught;
All First or Final Causes—simply nought;
To seek them, wanton waste of time and thought

IX.

“Nay, but”—drily hints his Mentor here, “What faults are you imputing!
'Tis a devotee, this dapper One! most reverent while uprooting!
‘Man must have a Faith,’ he cries, ‘some fine Ideal loved and followed!
Hear then Heavens, O Earth give ear! Mankind and you shall still be hallowed
With a spick-and-span new Creed, complete from Paradise to Tophet!
Soft now! . . . There's no God but Abstract Man, and Comte's his Concrete Prophet!
And to keep this compound Allah through his myriad parts progressing,
There's in Fame a Life Immortal for each hero's goal and blessing;
Blest or curst a Life Eternal for each soul of lowlier breeding,
In the good effects or evil of each life on lives succeeding!’
Then he flaunts you his fantastic God—great—sad—perplexed Humanity!
And, O sanguine sweet simplicity, most amiable Insanity!
Thinks devotion to a Deity so wayward, weak and airy
(Dying out behind for ever like a fire that scours a prairie)
Will seduce poor Man to fling away his one brief chance of pleasure—
Turn mere steel to ecstasies of sense, in Stoic over-measure;
Spurn the Syren Vice for Virtue's pale and perishable treasure!
All his joy the joy of healing by his pain the pain of others;

Pebble vile for Self to smile the Pearl of price for Self-like brothers;
Altar-flame when blown for them the hell-fire spark in Self he smothers!
So his bubble-doom he shall sky-tinge; dog-futured—dog-like dutiful,
Slave to make his firefly flash of life look solemn, grand and beautiful!
So his brother dim Automatons of like ephemeral quality,
Shall enshrine him, as in mockery of his wormy grave's reality,
Crowned in catacombs of Memory with most mortal Immortality!
Nay, for feigning Life so farcical,—grand, beautiful, and solemn,
Soothe his dust, his dry bones tickle, with a statue, bust or column!
‘Were not this,’ the sleek one simpers, ‘guerdon great and prospect glorious?
We are rotten, not forgotten! O the prize for pangs notorious!
Nothingness our doom, no less we'll make believe 'tis tempting—winning;
Life a skeleton—what then?—we'll pull a string and set it grinning!’”

Canto the Fourth. Terra Firma.

1. Universe-solutions. 2, 3. The Atomic Theory and Evolution (4) tell nothing as to First Causes—of Motion or powers of Atoms; 5, or of Life, whose orderly Evolution required; in organisms Impulses towards it; and a World arranged for it—both provided beforehand: clear proof of ‘Mind.’ 6. Nature, as by her general system, so in her smallest works, proves this foresight. 7. Could Chance effect this?—theory too improbable.

8. Other considerations as to First Cause and Final Results; Means and Ends. What makes Law resemble Chance; and Necessity. 9. The fancy of ‘Mind-Stuff’ merely assumes Mind is Matter, which is inconceivable. 10. All these are Second Causes; make them First—you make them Divine.

11. All existence, then, originates in what we must call ‘Mind.’ 12. This Power more probably perfect than imperfect. 13. So Ranolf sticks to his ‘Theism.’

I.

How many a sage has solved the Universe
Yet left the wondrous Mystery none the worse!

Hast seen a Lioness and Cubs at play?
Look! she is down upon her side and they
With noisy growl and harmless bite
Are worrying her in their small way,
Triumphant ramping o'er the creature dread;
But on the least alarm or impulse slight,
Lifting her haughty head,
With easy paw she puts them all aside,
And glares out fierce in majesty and pride!—

The mighty Mother, Nature, in such sort
Does with her philosophic children sport:
O! they have got her wholly at their feet,
Her mystery known, their mastery complete!
Then, with some little fact or newer light,
Quiet—disdaining even disdain—
She throws them all abroad again;
Reveals fresh depths to their astonished sight,
Resumes her sacred secrecy and might,
And reasserts her ancient reign.

II.

See Ranolf now with curious wonder whist,
Listening a Sage high-towering, wiry-witted,
German—a prime profound Materialist!—
“O lynx-eyes lightening through each Logic-mist—
Eyebrows with vehement fierce enquiry knitted—
Nose wide-upturned, importunate; comprest
Yet wistful working lips that never rest!
He looks an intellectual Corkscrew—fitted
To worm his wriggling and resistless way
To Nature's tightest-bottled secrets! Play—

Child's play, with that most penetrative muzzle
Were his, to ferret out her mysteries—take
The Universe to pieces, and remake—
Put it together like a Chinese puzzle!”

III.

And what did this Machine, this Logic-Mill
Grinding of mere necessity, not will,
Turn out as flour the hungry Soul to fill?
What drops of Truth did this Retort distil?

“Atoms! you build the Universe, with Gravity and Motion!
All Force is Force Mechanical; in Earth or Air or Ocean
Or depths of Space, of Spirit-Force we have no need or notion!
From Ether springs in Vortex-rings your being—your beginning;
By knot or clot therein begot, you spirally go spinning!
You clash, vibrate and generate Heat—your elastic quiver;
For Light—you smite through Ether's night a billion-league-long shiver!
You shrink and swell, attract—repel; heap single kinds in gases;
Or in proportions rare—exact, combine your varied classes
In molecules that join compact in elemental masses.
But restless Chance forced some of you, now mutually repelling,
In Æons past to mix and make one Molecule excelling
Whose myriads formed a tissue fine with plastic powers indwelling—

That ‘Protoplasm’ Light and Heat from their Sun-hidden sluices
Streamed on and stung into self-multiplying cells and juices—
Coaxed into creatures organised for simplest wants and uses.
These Molecules, impelled at first by just that Force mechanic
Which lifelike works in falling stones and crystals inorganic
We christen ‘Plastidules’—such plastic vivid stuff providing;—”

“O nothing like hard names in Greek, their weaker points for hiding
When to foregone conclusions Wits o'er cracking ice are gliding!
Here, crept in somehow while fine words our senses were beguiling,
See Life, mysterious Stranger, stands beside us blandly smiling!”—
A hint from Ranolf's Tutor this—his lecture-notes compiling.

“Then Chance and outward Nature's force compelled slow variation
In organs dowered with inward power of happy adaptation;
And creatures owning these endured; the rest died out neglected;
Defects from Sire to Son increased, or organs new perfected;
Thus for survival in the end the fittest were selected;
And Being's glorious cycle thus through all its grades unfolded,
The lower still advanced to higher,—lured, fostered, fed and moulded,

Or checked—killed off, as things around might well or badly suit them,
And favouring Chance or frowning chose to ruin or recruit them,
Till Monads grew to Man!—And whence his mighty Soul's resources?
Sunclear!—Each Atom has a Soul—the sum of all its forces—
Immutable—immortal—One—through all its myriad courses:
Each kind through chance-alliances, vicissitudes, convulsions,
Still true to its peculiar powers, attractions and repulsions.
And Plastidules have Souls as well—each Soul an aggregation
Of Souls of all the Atoms that it holds in combination;
But fickle, complex, varied, ever changeable and changing;
Through tangled files and piles on piles of finest fibre ranging,—
Till Man's great Soul at last their whole complexities embraces!
For Motion and Sensation are of all Soul-Life the bases;
(Touch a mimosa-leaf—it shrinks, a crab—it slinks off sideways;
To move—to feel, with Will—without, how close are their allied ways!)
Brain-molecules of course have both; and when, like church-bells ringing,
When stimulants, with nerves of sense for bell-ropes, set them swinging
Up in the belfry-brain, their subtle shiftings and vibrations

Are Consciousness and Thought, with all their endless commutations;—”

“Hoho! but here methinks the Ice with thundering cracks is starry!”—

“Down motor-nerves to muscles then, those tremors run nor tarry,
But Thought to Voluntary Act by reflex working carry.
And what are Likes—Dislikes?—Why, mere repulsions or attractions
Nerve-atoms keep—the source of all emotions—passions—actions.
As rose organic Life, the new accretions—complications
Roused in responsive brain by new external needs—relations,
Inherited, gave Instincts born with after generations:
Till, say, the White Ant's wondrous care for ‘tribal welfare’—rising
To moral worth that weal required—the brain still aggrandizing,
In Man to ‘Conscience’ soared at last, and ‘Duty’ self-despising!—
Yes! 'tis brain-atom-groups upbuild your stormy rage, you Tyrant!
Their countless links of forces forge your hopes, O heaven-aspirant!
While passion-atoms in your brain, pale Lover, 'tis, that pester
That blooming pile of Molecules (whose powers as such attest her,
Repelling while attracting too) your lovely peace-molester!”

IV.

“Brilliant that Evolution-theory!” cried
The youth's hard-headed, sceptical old Guide;
“Famous that Atom-creed (from India brought)—
But yet to solve the Eternal Mystery—nought!

“For whence came ‘Motion’ first? what is the Force
Which Motion gives to Matter in its course,
Or what when lying hid in Matter stayed?
And how is ‘Heat’ by mere vibrations made?
What sudden mystic transformation serves
To make them in that way affect our nerves
We label ‘Heat’? or can they tell aright
How undulating Ether gives us ‘Light’?—
The cause—nay, mode of all is lost in Night!

“Then whence came ‘Atoms’? whence their power to change
As Elements both form and essence?—Strange!
Here are accomplished Beings, skilled to tell
Both friends and foes when rushing on pell-mell;
Myriads that most in puzzling drill excel,
In cunning multiples attract—repel,
And practise pure Arithmetic so well!
A petty Pantheon of fine Godlets, see!
Making a miniature Mythology,
With furious loves, hates, powers, a set apiece,
And transformations weird that never cease,
Out-metamorphosing the Gods of Rome or Greece!—
Could Matter or Mechanic Force, in fact
Such chemic, mental feats originate—enact?

V.

“Next, whence came ‘Life’? and Life's ascending scale?—
For this, could Atoms and their Sphere avail?—
Well, that amazing Plastidule admit
Could start Life-forms—the Sphere around to fit,
(Though how Life sprung from Matter, Science gives
No hint—from lifeless things gets nought that lives;)
Grant, for such Forms to rise from grade to grade
That working wise Environment must aid,
Could modulate on such harmonious plan
The golden course the mighty Music ran
Till ‘closed the diapason full in Man;’
Still—if Life-germs and that wise Sphere indeed
Could to this grand array of Being lead,
Two things perforce their action must precede:
First—an unbounded impulse and desire
In living things to rise still higher and higher
In orderly ascent; on every hand
To spread on system—normally expand;
A self-constructing power to seize and hold
All from which aptest organs it could mould,
And let the germs of ampler life unfold:
And next, a World—forefashioned to refuse
All that erroneous tendencies might use—
Disorder need; forefraught with all supplies
For wants that made its tenants fitly rise—
For ordered Progress pre-arranged,—Earth, Seas and Skies!

“Was there not here an End—that guided—swayed—
Means from the first so suitably arrayed
To reach results so complex—well-defined?—
And what is this but Forethought—Purpose—Mind?”

VI.

Notes from lectures or from reading;
Talk between those two succeeding—
Student led and Tutor leading,
May we offer—not unheeding
Task of pruning—lopping—weeding?

Free Nature! how careless, confiding!
Half playfully, furtively hiding
Truths ever momentous, abiding,
In her least or her lowliest works!
There assurance of Power presiding—
Foreseeing—forethinking—foreguiding—
In silence and secrecy lurks!

Think of the foresight proved in that small fact—
Next century's oak within an acorn packed!

But ‘Mummy-corn’! O greater wonder hid
Than from the summit of its Pyramid
Those famous ‘Forty Ages’ saw or did!
Rome rose—toiled through long glories—slow decay;
Still, seeming dead, that grain's-germ ready lay
To shoot, a blade—a beautiful green birth
Soon as it touched ev'n England's warm moist earth!
Truly this Life-in-death with new life fired,
Some ‘knowledge of affinities’ required—
Some lasting holdfast to an end desired!

What sense in sense-less tissue there can be!
Mark—in a tiny mote you scarce can see
‘The movement to achieve an end precedes
And makes the organ for the end it needs.’
A floating jelly-speck in filmy skin—
Protean globule changing form at will—
Borne on by currents that revolve within,
Wraps itself round the mite of food it meets
And turns into a stomach! Feat of feats!
How do such prescient impulses begin?—
Mark other jellied sea-motes simpler still,
Where neither limb nor organ you espy,
Nor any structure Science can detect,
Expanding into spider-webs, erect
Shell-marvels of minutest masonry
That for ingenious geometric skill
With mightiest Angelo's or Wren's may vie;—
How do such impulses such ends fulfil?

‘Fancy the antenatal human Ear!’
(Says one consummate Master of Thought severe)
‘In secret framed—of microscopic size—
That grand Piano of three thousand strings,
Each to distinct vibrations fitly tuned
Of the outer air with which it ne'er communed,
Anticipates all Music's melodies.’
What! had the Cause from which this marvel springs
No mental power to regulate—review
All the relations of these complex things—
Purposely make them each to each so true?

But say, through Æons film by film 'twas spun,
With power to breed it passed from Sire to Son;—
By greater prescience then the end was won.

O wise dorr-beetle! you make fit supply
For eggs you lay the moment ere you die;
Look forward to results with foresight keen—
From want beforehand will an offspring screen
You and your ancestors have never seen;
With means most apt unconsciously achieve
Ends you know nothing of, nor could conceive!
Is there no Power to which your wants were known?
No guidance here—or sense beyond your own?

See working Bees, from whom their Queen has flown,
A sexless grub with ‘royal jelly’ feed,
And make it ‘grow a Queen’ new swarms to breed!
Could all the Reason, Science, Skill of Man,
Working their utmost since the World began,
Work towards an End upon a subtler plan
Or surer, than these brainless Insects can?

VII.

“Dear Matter-mongers! what, another God
To cap the crew created by your nod;
His work all this;—nor better work nor worse
Than when he tumbled out the Universe—
That rich result of Atoms in their dance,
That Chaos tossed to Cosmos by mere—Chance!

“Chance—Chance!”—O do not too irreverent deem
The youth, if wider teachings through him sent
A little thrill of mocking wonderment
At this superb idea of Chance Supreme:

1

“Come any Muse of—Fog! your fond voice raise!
Chant to great Chance some—disenchanting praise!
He said: ‘Against Resistance Pressure strained
Through Space, while Atom-showers in myriads rained:
I bade the glorious hurly-burly whirl,
The clusters cling, the Dervish-dances twirl;
I—hounding on the boundless blindman's-buff,
To build the Universe was God enough!’—
Sufficing God—this Chance!

2

“‘Prime Wizard I and King of Conjurors; say
Cardpacks by millions mixed before me lay;
No skill I used—no care to look or learn—
No knowledge of their sequences to spurn
Wrong combinations or the right retain;
All sleight of hand I scorned and craft of brain;
I shuffled—shuffled; twas my only spell—
And all—hey-presto! into Order fell!’—
Astounding God—this Chance!

3

“‘My happiest hazard bade this beauteous scheme
With forces every-way responsive teem;
Inspired the living plastic power that dwells
Expert in Atoms, Molecules, and Cells;
Their infinite propensities to strain

Towards ends they so triumphantly attain;
To pile up organs multiplied—as means
On means—to compass intricate machines!’—
Inventive God—this Chance!

4

“‘I gave the Elements the power and skill
To keep these Life-Machines ascending still;
Gave Earth and Seas and Skies the genius rare
Discreetly to select—extinguish—spare;
Made them a mould to shape each cunning cast,
Each newer marvel nobler than the last;
Gave Life and Nature answering powers, till both
Flashed forth the million miracles of—growth!’—
Aspiring God—this Chance!

5

“‘Lo! all results of all I did—not planned—
All of one kind, as all successful, stand!
No blots about my blind creations lurk;
No failures e'er disgraced my witless work;
My creatures no incongruous mixtures marred;
From all vagaries every race I barred;
From ways aberrant warded cell and seed;
Set limits to varieties of breed!’—
Methodic God—this Chance!

6

“‘My luck to no gross junctions lapsed or led—
Harpy or Centaur or Empusa dread!
In Earth's rock-depths on record never left
Worse malformations than a monstrous Eft;
No botch or bungle since my work began—

The monstrous Eft a miracle—like Man!
E'en forms extinct ordained due part to play
In one unfolding harmonised array!’—
Unerring God—this Chance!

7

“‘But O! of miracles the crown and cream—
Of my elaborate accidents supreme!
The brain I made from sense so subtly free
That first discovered it was made by Me!
O skill my suicidal skill to beat
And deify myself by self-defeat!
What other God such deadliest foe could frame
To turn High-Priest to glorify his name?’—
Surely no God—but Chance!”

VIII.

And then that old Enquirer, who
His free conclusions calmly drew
From facts alone his foes held true,
Would thus from time to time anew
The apologetic strain pursue.

O shining Apostles of Matter,
If in antitheistical panic
Effete superstitions you shatter,
In Chance and your Forces Mechanic
No Cause that is Primal you gain!
All notion from Nature dissever
Of Cause then (an idle endeavour!)

Or confess:—for the meanest of Forces
Which up to that rank you would strain—
Though but Motion's first faint indication;
Or, for something it holds in relation—
Say the Scene of its earliest stirring,
Beforehand—throughout—and for ever
Prepared for its sure operation;
Though too subtle that scene for sensation,
Any feeling, or seeing or hearing:—
You assume all the skill—the resources,
All the purpose to compass whatever
The final results may contain!

‘Your Newton's—Shakspeare's genius—('tis allowed)
Were latent once within a fiery cloud!’—
The marvel is, what from the first impelled
And guided onward in the course they held
Blind forces through all mazes—tangles—ties—
Till to such grand achievements they could rise;
Made from the first each step involve the next,
Unchecked—unfoiled—unfailing—unperplexed!

Find Being's slight beginnings slighter still,
Through ampler Æons creeping, if you will;
The less the means that lead to mighty ends
The more the Power employing them transcends;
The grand results themselves the slowlier grown,
The greater is the Prescient Purpose shown!

Chance is no Chance that works out wonders fine
As matchless Skill or Forethought could design.
But Law seems Chance, when Law's great system lends
All means it lets occur their destined ends:
Makes special ends that seem to fail, no less
New means to some more general success.
The Power that plays the game of Nature knows
All the results of all the dice he throws:
Whate'er turns up, it is to him the same;
High throws or low alike advance his game:
No lawless tampering with the dice he needs,
When such the game that every throw succeeds!

Necessity's no less an idle dream,
Though all results inevitable seem.
Law seems Necessity, if Will decree
That no exception to its Law shall be!

Necessity! its very name implies
'Tis an Effect itself, and must arise
From some compelling Cause beyond itself that lies.

IX.

But here's a new material forged! enough
To work these wonders all alone—‘Mind-Stuff!’
‘Each molecule of Matter has a germ
Of Mind attached called Mind-Stuff (mark the term)
Not Mind itself—but with its likes combined,
Able, so subtly linked, to turn to Mind!’

Well, not the prior question to discuss,
Whence came the ‘germ,’ and who attached it thus?
Here Science must a miracle endorse,
Or beg the point unproved (‘no Spirit-Force
Exists’)—assume it as a thing of course.—
Mind-Stuff!—Thought-Matter say; Death-Life; Black-White!
Can hyphens make all Nature's darkness—light?
You join two names—(but what is that when done?)
Of things unknown to prove them known—and one!

Or is Mind, Matter?—If on that you rest,
Give us three feet of Love (as children jest)
Which lest some cubic inch of Envy mar,
Hermetically seal it in a jar!
‘Ten times a Thought!’—bottle the product! Say
How many scruples weighty Reasons weigh!
Or polarise a flash of Wit, and find
At what nice angle Fancy's rays inclined
Start true reflections—off a polished Mind!

X.

Attraction—Atoms—Plastidules—'tis clear—
Impulsive organs—upward-guiding Sphere—
Motion—Necessity—or aught behind
Of simpler Force that you could feign or find—
All Second Causes these—whereby the First
Is of no jot of Might or Mind amerced.
But if to make them First your Faith incline,
Or make Mind, Matter's self; such Faith in fine
But shifts to them or this the powers divine
Old creeds to their ‘Creators’ would assign.

XI.

Yes! it seems—to one conclusion
No ingenious shift—illusion—
Should the Reason blind;
One great Fact defies rebuttal:—
All Existence, simple, subtle,
Points you with behest imperious
To a Source, profound, mysterious,
Ne'er to be defined;
Yet of Might so transcendental,
All the Powers that men call ‘mental’
Are its dim reflections merely,
Glimmerings of a Glory clearly
Inexpressible more nearly
Than as ‘Primal Mind’!

XII.

Yet of this First Intelligence confessed
Ineffable, may nought be fairly guessed?
Can we in sober reason think or feign
The ALL an Imperfection? or maintain
The Absolutely Perfect, an Ideal,
A Fancy, nowhere actual proved or real?
But say 'tis realised; what wonder we
Seeing so little of that All should be
Unable to discern how what is styled
‘Evil’ by us, through Nature running wild,
Can be with such Perfection reconciled?

A full round Moon the Universal Scheme,
We catch the Crescent's ragged golden gleam;
In Man's wide Faiths if hoary Light be found
Would feebly reillume the faded round,
Faint reflex of far glory!—'tis mayhap
Real as that ‘old Moon in the new Moon's lap’!

But since on two great negatives profound
Science and Metaphysics are at one,
And all their mightiest Masters most renowned—
Grant Darkness all its grandeur—own that none
Can prove ‘Divine Existence’ cannot be;
While for its ‘nature,’ all alike agree
Your Kants and Newtons, Doctors wigged and gowned,
Helpless as smockfrocked Hobnail at his plough,
Baffled before that mystery must bow;
On what compulsion must good sense allow
That this Unknown ‘First Cause’ in deed or will
Has just but so much power for good and ill
As in the Universe we see displayed?
When even the fraction seen of Power—Skill—Mind—
Say in that play of Atoms, so transcends
All human estimate, even Science ends
Her coolest quest bewildered and half blind?
Were it not then a paradox most strange
Should finite Mind, thus paralysed before
Its best-proved Actual, limit and degrade
All possible Existence to the range
Of what its impuissance can conceive?
We say, nor—Sages Positive!—ignore

What truths you teach, 'tis harder to believe
That which has done so much cannot do more
And all the Evil that exists retrieve
With compensating Good somewhere in store—
Than that the fault lies with the human Mind,
Too weak or lowly-placed the cause to find
Why from the first throughout the Universe
The best has not excluded all the worse.

And more preposterous it is to dream
The Universe is an abortive scheme,
Worked by a Power unequal to its task,
Or its presumed incompetence to mask,
Than that the vast Obscure which round us lies,
Somehow—somewhere—the Being must comprise
Our most exalted Nature must demand;
Reality than our Ideal more grand;
And therefore, in some way least understood,
Nay, which the Finite could not understand,—
Perfectly wise—just—powerful—loving—good!

To Reason less repugnant seems this creed,
And less credulity than theirs to need
Who for ‘First Cause’ in blind Momentum trust,
Or find Divinity in finer dust.

XIII.

Thus have we faintly shadowed forth
How, tutored by a Mind, sagacious, deep
With the true sceptic caution of the North,
Apt by no Master's word to swear, nor let

The current of a Creed in fashion sweep
Firm Reason off her feet whate'er its set,
How, for a Soul so led—bold—healthy—bright
As his—the Sea-bred Youth's of whom we write,
The young fresh faith in so-called ‘God’—that came
From deeper depths than Logic's, as before
Sprung greenly through Doubt's furnace, and no more
Shrivelled or shrunk in scientific blight,
Than dewy grass through window-panes descried
Waving unscorched in vivid flickering flame
Reflected from the fire that burns inside.

Canto the Fifth. Cloud-blowing.

1. Talk about the ‘Soul’—and ‘Immortality.’ 2. Ideal result of the work of an Ideally Divine Power—ultimate bliss for all. 3. Does ‘Evolution’ preclude Immortality? 4. Spirit-Life not excluded by the Material Universe, as (5) There may be an Unseen Universe beyond; or after; or (6) within this One—since Matter may refine to Spirit.

7. Is not ‘Cosmical Energy’ the outcome of Omnipotent Will? and (8) akin to Thought and Will in Man; both, emanations of Infinite Will? 9. This Will the Power that informs all Nature—‘Personality’ its clearest display. The union of this last with Matter being utterly inexplicable—what do we know of it when separated? how be sure it may not still exist? Want of sensuous experience of it no disproof. May not new organs await it even in the Atomic Universe?

10. Soul-truths perhaps only to be found and proved by Emotions. 11. That Man should rise by the False—a discord in Nature. 12. What makes the scheme of Existence rational, it is rational to hold true. 13. What if Immortality should have to be proved by a practical ‘reductio ad absurdum’ of its denial? 14. Hope.

I.

“The silvery dews on the meadows are blending
Like gauze with the gold of the buttercups' gleam;
The hawthorn is scenting the hollow green ways;
Its masses all snowy with blossom depending
Are sunlit emerging from faintly blue haze
Like a delicate dream!

O the leaflets—how innocent, frank, their unfolding;
What a sweet hidden twitter—the birds' callow speech!
Two loud muffled notes like a flute's—how they stray!
'Tis the Cuckoo—his weariless plaint still upholding—
Still calling for something still further away—
For a joy out of reach!

See the framework of traceried jet overshingled
With emerald scales, jewel-roofing of Spring!
Over canopy canopy brilliantly spread,
Made of gems, the transparent and shadowy mingled!—
—Just the Elm—with new leaves, and the Sun overhead;
'Tis a tent for a King!”

So Ranolf; beckoning to a settle rude
His Tutor, as their musings they pursued.
The youngster, drinking into heart and brain
Elastic freshness from the fragrant Morn,
Could not but launch out in a cheery strain,
As on the ‘Soul’ they touched—‘Immortal Life,’
(O noblest themes with direst discords rife!)
Treating Despair almost with joyous scorn.—
Sanguine, say you, his temper!—If his blood
Coloured his reasoning, haply 'twas as good
As props the atrabiliar doctrines dyed
So darkly on the melancholic side.
We ground on those mudbanks of Doubt alone
In the ebb of the world's heart or our own;
Tangled in shallows of Despondence dark
Only when life is at low-water mark.
Not in Man's healthiest, his completest state
Do such misgivings his wise joys abate:
For Confidence is Life—and Hope is health:
And youth's glad trust is worth most mental wealth!

II.

“What! will they say our hopeful trust is blind!
That the Heart's sunshine needs the clouded Mind!
Must Reason then be spurned from her high seat,
Or that most natural passion held a cheat?
That thirst for deathless life, that high desire
With which all wakened Intellects aspire,
As the dread Serpent of Eternity
Had bitten them with fangs like those accurst
Once fabled of the Dipsas—causing thirst
That quenchless burnt for ever! must this be
Held a mere lure to lead the human race
Through the long ages to some loftier place,
And from the myriad generations spent
And wasted in the wearisome ascent,
Evolve some sample of consummate skill
Whom powers with instincts harmonized should fill—
The clearest Reason and the purest Will?
That perfect race—must it, too, have its day,
Rise, growth, and culmination, and decay,
Then, like its predecessors, pass away?
Say, does ‘Supreme Intelligence’ contrive
A million shifts this vast machine to drive,
Only at such a failure to arrive?
Can neither check illusive Hope's uprise,
Nor make the illusion's fathomless disguise
At least impervious to poor human eyes?
What ‘Mind Divine’ would show for one short hour
Such want, yet waste, of Goodness and of Power?
If such the Universe, at once declare
Some Demon-Bungler has been busy there;

Willing and yet too clumsy to deceive,
Creating spirits to aspire and grieve
And die without redemption or reprieve!
And not this World's,—this human race alone—
But all the Soul-drifts—countless throngs unknown
In many an unimaginable Star
Whirled round unnumbered Suns that shine afar!
Myriads on myriads fleeting like a breath,
Endless vicissitude of Life and Death;
The swarming star-shoals coming—going—whence
Or whither? without object in the dense
Infinitude of futile impotence!

“Nor boots it that the central Primal Cause
Itself might boast of permanence or pause,
Be an ‘Eternal Now’—a ‘Boundless Here,’
If all his emanations gone and spent
And every fleeting vain development,
Though after million Æons disappear
Left neither in a Seen or Unseen Sphere!
No! any ‘Mind’ I would believe or teach
As Power Supreme, Divine, Eternal, One,
Should be at lowest competent to reach,
And to eternise ere his work were done,
The good of All through happiness of Each!
Each life progressive and the last result
In bliss unqualified should all exult;
Perfect as well as permanent should be
Creation's glorious Crown and every glad degree!

III.

“But does that beauteous Evolution scheme
Prove Man's great Hope a too ambitious dream?”

“Why think,” the Elder said, “it should or can?
Prove if you will the human race began
Far off in Manlike Ape or Apelike Man;
Detect or fancy links that would annul
Diversities in shape of bone or skull;
Prove Conscience, Sense of Duty, Right and Wrong,
From self-preserving instincts, weak or strong,
Tribal or Individual, slowly came;
Are not Man's soaring spirit and its claim,
Its maker, mystery, miracle, the same
As if in that more vulgar conjuring way
He sprang at one great leap from ruddy clay?—
'Tis not what height he rose from, but the height
He reaches—makes Man need the Infinite;
'Tis not his birthright—but the Soul he sways
When born—such need into a Hope must raise!”—

IV.

Said Ranolf, “What about the notion
With which some potent Pundits batter
Their foes, in obstinate devotion
To one absorbing hobby—Matter—
That in the Universe around
No ‘room for Spirit’ can be found?”

The Old Man from his poke outdrew
His pipe and tapped the ashes out,
Filled it from twisted pouch anew,
For ‘Lucifers’ then felt about,
And lit it with the third-struck match,
As half-delayed by lurking doubt;
Then from his pursed lips slowly blew
A whiff of smoke, and seemed to watch
How from its centre it would curl
Outward in circles, then o'erhead
In dainty spirals float and spread:
“Just like their wondrous vortex-whirl
Of Atom-rings”—he smiling said;
Then gently, taking circuit wide,
Yet half impatiently replied:

V.

“What! no room for your ‘Soul-Life’ they say? so with Atoms and Vortices packed
Is your Ether, no Space is there left for your ‘Ghosts’ to exist in or act?
Might a dullard presume but to ask, while on this side or that side they brawl,
Can their utmost sagacity prove that the Universe Seen is the All?
Think of ‘Energy’—mystical wonder! an Infinite Ocean of Force
Through the visible Universe flying—of Heat, Light and Motion the Source!
Though to active or latent it change, in amount undiminished it flows;

Indestructible then and Eternal?—but who can its wellspring disclose?
From the Sun ever effluent—true: but to Him from what fountain effused?
What becomes of it all? but a part in the visible Universe used,
While the bulk of it rushes at speed inconceivable—whither away?—
Nay the part—must it quench in this Cosmos its Æons on Æons of play?
The conditions it works in, for ever be just what you find them to-day?
Must the whirl of the planets wax fainter and fainter till into the Sun
They are plunged, and the Suns on their mightier centres be dashed one by one,
At each crash upward-flinging a billion-years' flicker of quickening heat
Efflorescent in Worlds ever fewer, the whirl and the waste to repeat
Till the last on a measureless cinder-heap sink and—the Farce be complete?
Must the Universe-Fire—enormous—æonian—burn itself out,
And the Energy cease when it dies? Shall a failure so infinite flout
At the last this ineffable wonderful outflow of purposeless Might?—
Better think it may well from and wend to some Universe hidden from sight!

VI.

“Need we ask if that Universe elsewhere in Space—this familiar one—be?
Or a new kind of Space to be measured more ways than our hampering ‘Three?’
Or belike in a kind of Existence by Space and by Time unconfined,
In the thoroughly ‘Absolute?’ both of them blanks to our limited Mind?
Why, the Cosmos whose surface we see, what behind it may lurk or within?—
Up from solids to liquids, from liquids to gases, still subtler, more thin,
Look how Matter refines; then as fluid Electric, as Light or as Heat,
Or their medium Ether, half loses its nature; and lastly its height
Of pure subtilty—rather the point where it possibly vanishes quite—
Gravitation—Attraction, attains: while the finer of every grade
Can the grosser, it seems, interpenetrate, permeate, freely pervade!
Who shall say then, where ‘Spirit’ begins, where the merely Material ends?
Must that process refining be stopped where our limited ken it transcends?
To Existences pure, immaterial, rather believe it pursued,
Which the presence of Matter nowise from the place that it filled would exclude!—

So may thousands of Worlds all of Spirit no twinkle or flame would betray
Through the starry expanses (if Spirit need any locality) stray,
Or each other pervade intermingling, in rest unimpeded or flight,
Unperceived, undetected, unknown,—a Universe hidden from sight!”

VII.

A cliff-top lone and high;
A noon-day soft and calm;
Sea melting into sky;
Sky into liquid balm;
Horizon lost!—
The vast expanse how bare!
Unmoving, here and there,
Clouds floating on the Sea,
Ships white-sailed, hung in Air,
Four—five at most:
How tiny each—a toy
Upon the pale blue, fair,
Silent Immensity!
—So better to enjoy
Their dreamy talk,
Our Student and his Guide,
He of the shaggy hair
Snow-white—the weary-eyed,
Now on the cliff-top bare
Together walk.

“But for Power?” the latter was saying, “Can we who are forced to believe
That the First Cause of All is Intelligence greater than Man can conceive—
Guess the mode of its Power?—Just think of the Force in this Cosmos we trace:
This Earth flying miles as we speak it, a thousand a minute through Space!
In a second from Pole to Equator Auroral effulgences leap!
Then the billion-leagued shudders of Light, how they speed through the Infinite Deep!
Yet beside Gravitation—Attraction, all these may but linger and creep!
Ever swifter, more subtile, intense grows the Power that recedes and ascends;
To Omnipotence still and Ubiquity nearer and nearer it tends!
What should stay its progression—that Power expanding, intensified still,
At the point where we cease to perceive?—But confess, to Omnipotent ‘Will,’
As of Force the sole fountain our reason can reach, ere the quest must be stanched,
We may follow, and fairly, the Might that across the Immensities launched
Wafts a million of Worlds on its breath in a sprinkle of galaxy-spray,
And can weave the gold meshes of Life our Earth-speck is webbed with to-day!—
So this Cosmos itself of that Will were the outcome, expression and sign,
Were its infinite-spreading and endlessly-ramified Instrument, Shrine,
And myriad-organed Embodiment ever and wholly divine!

Worked from some inconceivable Source, say, of mental or physical Light—
Inconceivable truly, but real,—in the Universe hid or in sight!

VIII.

“Two Mysteries freely confest by the sages of Science we find:—
Through the visible Universe clearly an ‘Energy’ works like a Mind;
For the grasp of the Senses too fine: never known but with Atoms combined;
Never caused by these Atoms—for how can dead Matter originate Force?
And how linked with the Universe ever a Mystery dark as its source.—
Through the brain of Mankind works an ‘Energy’—Thought call it—Consciousness—Will;
Never known but when joined with brain-atoms; itself imperceptible still;
Never caused by these Atoms,—for how can mere Matter, though living—be Thought?
And how linked with the Brain such a secret, in vain is the clue to it sought.—
Are they kindred these ‘Energies’ then? and the last, what if simply 'twere true
'Tis a drop of its Ocean, the first, and as such indestructible too!
Why—of Matter one mightiest Mystagogue—vaunted of Theists a rod—
A candid and fearless fine creature whose only one bugbear was—‘God,’—

Whose disgust with dead Ghosts in the Sky made him blot out the sky for the sod—
Has recorded of this very ‘Thought’—in its Essence who deepliest delves
Must acknowledge it one and the same with the Essence of Things-in-Themselves—
Of this Universe then! and 'tis clear that the happy result undesigned
Of his proving them both to be Matter—is proving them both to be Mind!
Soul-Energy then and the Cosmical—are they not both of one kind?—
Of ‘Omnipotent Will,’ say, but streamlets or filaments, ample or slight?
The immediate Effluence then of that Essence Divine, which aright
To reveal—though divinely bedimmed lest its naked transcendency smite
On perception too finite and feeble with splendour unbearably bright—
Is the use of this Garment of God—this Universe ever in sight?

IX.

“Aye indeed, 'tis Intelligent Power—Omnipotent Will, as it seems,
Feeds the ‘Energy’ mystic which through this molecular Universe streams,
And can guide or unite with—inform—all its Forces in all their degrees,
And impart just so much of itself as its purpose or wisdom may please;

From its lowest display—Gravitation—your Newton and Locke call ‘divine,’
Up through sensuous impress and impulse instinctive till clearest it shine
In the Conscience and Will of Mankind. Surely this, well may Reason maintain
Is the ‘Soul’ in the Atoms the fancy or faith of that German would feign—
Is the ‘Mind-Stuff’ to molecules joined—in the rock—in the plant—in the brain!—
But the union of Body with Thought, if Man has no faculties fit,
Says Science, its Nature to tell; on the truth can he possibly hit
Of what follows their severance? hidden the link—and not knowing a whit
Of the Essence of either when linked—are we hopelessly forced to admit
That Man's Personality—peerless on lofty-willed Conscience its throne—
Of that Energy ever divine the divinest Investiture known—
Could not live though the link should be broken—its vassal and vehicle gone?—
O we never have known it—forsooth! with Experience inch-deep at best!—
Why, the truth of what lies beyond Sense, say how should the Senses attest!
The invisible has not been seen, the inaudible heard! 'tis confest:
But o'erdone by the surface of things as we helplessly dabble and glower,
In such Infinite Mystery plunged—in the hands of such Infinite Power,

Can we tell, do you think, all that Power may do to combine and to change
Even Atoms through millions of Worlds that from solar to nebular range,
Though a thread of its working in them with its work on our Earth-speck may blend?
While between what our microscopes show and the bounds to which Atoms extend,
Even here, are such structural wonders—complexities,—change without end,
As the keenest sagacity stagger—the finest conceptions transcend.
Can we tell what is possible, then, or impossible either, to Might
Such as that, with such Essence as Mind—in a realm imperceptible quite,
Though within their molecular bounds—in the Universe plainly in sight?—”

X.

“Yet after all”—and here the wary old
Campaigner in the war against Despair
Fell back upon a fortress he would hold
When Reason's forces seemed too hardly prest,
Rearing a broader banner in brighter air
And sounding notes that like a bugle's blare
Triumphant echoes woke in Ranolf's breast:

“Whate'er that Unknown Realm—of Spirit whole
Or matter wholly past perception—be,
That hiding-place and homestead of the Soul;
Its nature and mysterious destiny;

If entrance 'tis impossible to gain
For Science to that royal-rich domain,
And Intellect alone be found too poor
A tool to burst the Imperial Palace-door,
(Though I must think the expanding range allowed
To Man's Experience will supply some day
A basis, starting-point or link whereby
Science Demonstrative will pierce the cloud
And back with glittering spoil come laden gloriously!)
But if this may not be, why fear to say
The Soul, its sphere and nature must be such—
For Intellect thereon to logicise
Is just to try rich colours with the touch,
Or test melodious sounds with keen bright eyes;
As Dante's heard the sculptured Widow's speech—.
On that white frieze-like Purgatorial bank
Whose end each way his eyesight could not reach—
Ask death for her son's murderer as she sank
At Trajan's feet, and ceased not to beseech
Till his roused virtue had vouchsafed her prayer;
Then saw the sound of visible replies
The marble Emperor made her voiceless cries.
That feat we would not ape, but rather dare
Confess that in an atmosphere so rare
The leaden wing of Logic cannot rise;
That by Emotion, not Reflection, best
The Soul is borne aloft in that fine air—
Feeling, not Thought, her fiery chariot there!
The highest Sentiment were then confest
The base whereon the highest Truth must rest;
The highest Truth itself, not such—about

Whose sureness 'twere impossible to doubt;
But as to sureness, in the next degree,
Such as, not proved, most probable might be:
True till a higher Truth were felt or found
And by the beating hearts of men around
As such accepted—welcomed—honoured—crowned;
Still raised, refined, as Science purged away
What Error in her reach obscured its ray;
Aught from that lower realm that might alloy
Its gold, would Logic fasten on—destroy;
And everything she honestly disproved,
Must be relinquished—howsoe'er beloved:
With one proviso, proved default of proof
Is from disproof a million leagues aloof.

“Let us cling then, my lad, to that glimpse of a Truth about Truth we have caught,
That Emotions may teach it as well as Sensations. Aye! perish the thought
‘What we feel with the fingers is all—what we feel with the heart shall be nought!’
That the heart and the soul reach beyond all the senses is ever confest;
Then for what lies beyond all the senses, their evidence must be the best.
And if many, the best and the deepest to feel and to think, can arrive
By emotions most pure to that grandest conviction—the Soul shall survive,
Such a theorem rightly they prove, do they not? from premises read
Not in reasons but feelings alone—Q.E.D. of the heart, not the head?—

XI.

“There's a ‘Tendency making for Righteousness:’ True! which abundantly proves
A ‘Supreme Moral Power’ exists; all the more that so slowly it moves,
So accords with the gradual processes physical Nature so loves.
If to physical Harmony—Order, the Universe wins as a whole,
May not Order and Harmony Moral be fixed for its loftier goal?—
Now the thinkers and feelers—those best and profoundest, sincerely declare
With such Power—of Reason all perfect and Will the divinest—to share
Inexpressible inner communion, purifies, elevates most
The Spirit that yearns to be like it. We know too, the pride and the boast
Of their race—the magnificent Souls who have loftiest towered through Time,
By the depth of their love of that Power have been stirred up and strengthened to climb—
And through faith in Immortal Existence, have soared to that climax sublime!
What! did Man o'er those animal cycles to royal pre-eminence rise
But by stimulants—impulses true—true outer and inner supplies,
Yet by means that are false and illusive to moral perfection must tower—

True Sun and true Air make the plant, mock Sun and sham Air make its flower!
Are not forces through Nature the nobler, to nobler productions that tend?
And shall Man by the false and deceptive, most truly the lower—ascend?
Can His upward be really Her downward? one refluent wave can he be—
Flowing back 'mid the millions that run right-ahead in the Universe-Sea?
Is he placed topsy-turvy, as 'twere, with harmonious Nature at strife—
Like a slide set by chance upside-down in the rich Magic-Lantern of Life?

XII.

“Look! here's an arrangement for Being—half-finished; a scheme incomplete;
By itself, full of outrage on Justice and Love; a remorseless deceit
For the high aspirations it rouses; a jargon, a nightmare, a cheat!
Like a Nineveh fragment of tile, nicked all over with arrow-head lines,
Broken off through the middle of each—a farrago of meaningless signs.
Comes a cuneate Linguist profound, fills the lines up with words he has guessed,
With ‘Survival of Soul,’ ‘Probation by Evil,’ ‘Reward’ and the rest,

Till it seems all consistent and rational, beautiful, wisest and best!
Were it sensible then, or wild whim, to believe the lost half of the tile
Was o'ernicked by the Ancient Clay-writer with words in a similar style,
To be found, when they dig up the whole of the mighty Assyrian pile?

XIII.

“'Tis my faith—should this Soul-Life, my lad, in the Intellect's hotter attacks
Melt away like a counterfeit flower Superstition has modelled in wax,
And the Heart could not rear the live blossom,—yet Nature and Fate would be heard—
Would ‘reduce’ its denial at last to a crushing, terrific ‘absurd;’
Let Mankind down a withering process of practical Logic be hurled;
Prove by vivid Experience how,—mortal-soulled—a mere animal World
To a Bedlam and Chaos must come—universal putridity—rot!
So be forced to assume Immortality—hold it Humanity's lot—
Whether ‘Logic’ the truth of the Fact could directly demonstrate or not!

XIV.

“Life's the green Cone-cap hiding for its hour
That golden Californian poppy-bud;
Death pulls it off—outbursts the Soul—the flower!”—
(So mused that time-worn Sage)—“The Soul when freed
From its environment of flesh and blood
Will flush into full-blooming power
The riddle of its folded fate to read.—

See the dilating Sun
Down to the mountains sunk!
An awful human Eye
Beneath such sable brows—
Cloud-stripes like Cedar-boughs
Soft-floated off some giant trunk
Of ancient Lebanon.

Why are you watching there,
O great red Mystery—why?—
Just as—with ominous glare
Yet grandly—solemnly sublime,
O'er mortal Life and fleeting Time,
Watches Eternity!

—Watches; and yet can throw
A magic mellowed glow
Of Hope o'er Life's mysterious doom,
As balmy Evening's soothing gloom
You sanctify—illume!—

The sandbank of the Sea-lagoon
You glorify to gold;
Crimson the jet-white sandbirds—soon
To cease their restless run, and fold
Their wings on sea-roost cold.

I saw you rise this Morn.
On the black Mountain's rim there came
Some little tongues of shifting flame;
They linked—a dome grew slow in sight,
Then throbbed—a sphere of blinding light!
Low down, right opposite,—
The wan full Moon, dead-white,
Disconsolate—forlorn,
Lingered in shy retreat
To see what glad reception might
Her dazzling rival greet.
—So looks poor Faith at Science. Yet
Why should she at the splendour fret,
(I thought) the glory shun?
Her turn will come; that rival bright
Will fill—or own her full of light
Ere all be done!”

Canto the Sixth. Land-Life or Sea-Life?

1. Choice of a profession. 2. ‘Physic.’ 3. ‘Law.’ 4. ‘Divinity.’ 5. Again to Sea. 6. Sea-sketches. Sunset on the Line. 7. A luminous Sea. 8. An Iceberg.

I.

O blest escape from psychologic Quest
And metaphysic Sieves for sifting air!
Life-theories and their seesaw Swing at rest,
Life's livelier Roundabout on earth to share!—
Not unamused, ‘in that obscure sojourn
Though long detained,’ our Optimist must turn
To some profession now, and haply learn
How in the hungry press of strugglers best
The means of life his own right hand may wrest.
But better is the narrow humble sphere
Which sets from childhood's days before the eyes
Some calling which to climb to were a prize,
Which, difficult to win, is therefore dear—
Than wider means which leave the cultured lad
Himself to choose what path of life to run;
Let Fancy tell what Duty should be done,
Make worthless what can be for wishing had,
And prove how too much choice is worse than none.

And this felt Ranolf—puzzled sore to name
Church—Physic—Law—which most attractive seemed,
Or rather least repulsive should be deemed.

II.

What marvellous study like the human frame!
What webs and tissues by that living loom
Woven to rarest texture, richest bloom;
What wefts and warps of flexile ducts that wind
In never-tangled courses intertwined;
What mechanisms intricate, exact,
In orderly profusion ranged and packed;
What cunning cordage curiously inlaced;
What delicate engines of supply and waste;
What fine concoctions and witch-juices strange
For metamorphosis and magic change;
What subtlest forces balanced and combined;
Leaving poor human skill so far behind,
All Art seems artless, all Invention blind!
(Wonders, all Chance! some wondrous Sages say!)
But then how saddening, that superb array
No more in healthy and harmonious play,
But festering in disorder and decay!
What grander triumph can Experience show
Than the cool Surgeon's, who in conquering strife
With fell disease, with science-guided knife
Dares open wide the dreadful door of Life
Some perilous moments, and his dexterous feat
Of desperate rescue rapidly complete
With sure decisive stroke, lest the grim Foe
Should entrance gain and all his work o'erthrow!
“Aye!” thought our student, with a transient glow,

“For object so exalted who denies
The labour of a life were well bestowed?
But then, alas! to that proud power the road
Through fetid chambers of Dissection lies
Whereat a very Ghoul's foul gorge would rise.”

III.

Well, cannot Law awake some genuine spark
Of true ambition—pay for patient toil?
What spectacle more pleasing than to mark
Some Master of inimitable fence
Strike Falsehood to the heart through every foil
And feint of scoundrel skill? mark learning, sense,
And trained acumen flash their sunlike rays
Through all the vile, perversely winding ways
Of vice; illuminate the burrowed maze
And crannies Craft and Cunning know to shape,
And stop their every earthhole of escape!
Is not the Law a mighty mesh to snare
The many-shifted meanness of mankind?
Of cheated Innocence the Champion fair
Against all wrongs by tyrant Wealth designed?
Its task, what nobler since the world began,
To sort and settle by right Reason's plan
All deeds Man does or duties owes to Man?
To stamp the drill and discipline of schools
On the rude progeny of fertile Chance;
Through Time's still widening wilderness to chase
With the slow hounds of principles and rules
(Though mostly distanced in the dubious race)
The ever-doubling hares of Circumstance?
Nay! may not even youth's impatience glance

With pitying interest or perhaps with praise—
At that mole-eyed devotion of old days
Which with such mousing perseverance strove—
Such creeping subtlety and crabbed love,
To fit dead forms to living ages, lacking
Responsive facts that made their sole defence;
In search of reasons, dull inventions racking
For aims that had to reason no pretence;
And stretching Ingenuity to cracking,
To reconcile absurdity to sense?—

“Fine theories all!” thought Ranolf—“but that bowl
Of Law—what golden bias guides its roll
We know; how riches crush the right—how long
Perverted learning bolsters up the wrong;
And doubtless as distasteful it must be
To dabble in diseased morality
As physical corruption. Is it true
Besides, that Wrong, like Right, to get its due,
Let Justice fairly judge between the two,
Must have its Advocate, whate'er he feel,
To brawl and burst with simulated zeal?—
'Twere odious as, for those sly silent fees,
To cant condolement with high-fed Disease,
Paddle with Luxury's pampered pulse—and steal
Through sham sick rooms with cat-like pace and purr
Sleeking palled Fashion's pleasure-ruffled fur.”

The petulant rash judgments of a boy
Were these—all too impatient of the alloy
Which human doings that have most of gold
Too strictly analyzed must needs unfold?—
They were enough to sway him, so are told.

IV.

Try then the Church. “What Church?” our youngster sighed:
“Is there within the world's circumference wide
A Church or any Temple—in this dearth
Of Faith, with half her heavenly cables snapt,
Hope's anchor scarcely left—has life or worth
To make its intellectual votaries feel
What in old days they felt; that martyr zeal,
Forgetfulness of present self and rapt
Possession of the Infinite on Earth
That gave a grandeur to the Life it scorned?
But who would brook a Church if unadorned
With absolute love of Truth? unless it gave
To Thought the utmost freedom it could crave;
Followed where'er it led, true Reason's light;
Avowed itself to Truth an utter slave,
Truth ever and Truth only—come what might?
And who that loved his own free soul could bear
To work, a digger in the dark gold mine
Of spiritual Truth, or bold researches try
Where scientific Doubts with deadly shine
Like Icebergs freeze, or Faith's bleached fragments lie
Whitening the hot Saharas of Despair—
Handcuffed and fettered with the leaden links
Of dogmas stereotyped—creeds cut-and-dry
And double-dry? heart-paralysed by dread
Of all but what smooth smug ‘Society’
That feels by fashion and by custom thinks,
Gives pass and permit to? Whose Soul so dead
As dare put on a Soul-deliverer's power

While forced or fain a Law Divine to trace
Of Spiritual Storms in frothy-bubbling suds
Raised in some legal Washtub where they scour
And rinse hot-steaming ritualistic duds—
Awestruck lest ultra-rubric rag and clout
Lose cabalistic colour, gloss or grace,
Ere it can rage its tiny tempest out?—
Or who with strangely grovelling Quixotry
Would think to quell the Evil all about
With candlesticks and censers?—satisfy
The crave for Infinite Good that cannot die,
With trim and tinselled haberdashery?
Who, in a fight so fierce in such an age,
With lackered shields and silvered wooden swords
Of ceremonious mummeries would engage?
With pagan posture-tricks such warfare wage
And pantomime, in place on Thespian boards—
Stage-twirlings in the death-tug! Who could dote
In imbecile expectance to assuage
Sharp pangs of soul with prayers run up by rote
In self-complacent trills with pompous throat?
Would any heart remorse had desperate driven,
Or milder sense of ‘Sin’ abased, on heaven
In accents guided by the gamut call,
And do-re-mi-sol-fa the God of All?”

His youthful scorn would graver minds endorse?—
Senses or Reason—any hook to raise
The loach-like groundling Soul with—all must praise;
The end—Soul-raising—no one contravenes;
But why absurdly deify the means?—
Then greater is a Priesthood's duty too
Old Truth admitted to apply—enforce,

Than to explore the Universe for new.
But how much priestly truth is granted true?
Science her freshets still must thunder down
Of physical Truth, though drowsing Churches drown.
Should not the eye be open?—hand be free
To seize at once whate'er the eye may see
Of nascent truth, and let the dying go?
What, if your Priests, like Shepherds half asleep,
Over the gold-brown gloss of dogmas keep
Vain watch, while half their sheep a-hungered stray
To succulent green pastures far away?
For Forms of Faith, though beautiful they be,
If e'er the Truth, their living spirit, flee,
What are they like but cold and stony flowers,
Those geysers boiling up through emerald bowers
In far-off islands he was soon to see,
Clothe with a sparry spume, that hardens white
Around the perished plant concealed from sight,
But still retains in delicate array
Each form of tiny leaf and tender spray,
Cold, crumbling, colourless—in lifeless pride—
No growing green, no circling sap inside!

But how should he presume by thought or deed
To set up for a sower of Truth's seed?—
Not his the credence that could teach a creed;
The doubly-sure assurance that could feed
Another's faith with fervour of its own.
Faith has its temperate as its torrid zone;
And widely different as joy from grief
Is certain knowledge from sincere belief.

100

V.

Well, ere his choice was fixed—his father died,
And left the youth with more of gold supplied
Than for his moderate wishes would provide.
So to the Sea, his passion all the time,
He took. To rove from clime to clime
At least would gratify his ruling taste:
At least, he knew, upon the watery waste
His buoyant spirits kept in play would be—
His soul unfettered still, his fancy free.

VI.

And now behold this Ranolf once again
Tossing, a student-sailor on the main;
Sending from time to time, home-hearts to please,
Some glimpses of the glories of the seas,
And snatches of reflection—such as these:

“How grandly—when throughout the silent day,
Some ample Day, serene, divine,
Beneath the glowing Line,
Our helpless Ship had hung as in a trance
In light-blue glassiness of calm that lay
A wide expanse
Encircled by soft depths of ether clear,
Whose melting azure seemed to swim
Surcharged and saturate with balmiest brilliancy—
How grandly solemn was the Day's decline!
Down as if wholly dropped from out the Sky
The fallen Sun's great disc would lolling lie
Upon the narrowed Ocean's very rim,
Awfully near!

101

A hush of deep suspense, grave, almost grim,
Wrapt all the pure, blank, empty hemisphere:
While straight across the gleaming crimson floor,
From the unmoving Ship's black burnished side,
There ran a golden pathway right into the coré
Of all that throbbing splendour violet-dyed;
Whither it seemed an easy task to follow
The liquid ripples tremblingly o'erflowing
Into the intense and blinding hollow
Of palpitating purple, showing
The way as through an open door
Into some world of burning bliss, undreamt of heretofore!
Whose heart would not have swelled, the while
Deep adoration and delight came o'er him
At that stupendous mystery, close before him!
Not less, but more stupendous that he knew
Perchance, whate'er the subtle surface-play
Of Science had to teach of level ray
Reflected or refracted; and could say
Nay, almost count the millions to a mile,
How far away
That pure quintessence of dark fire, deep-lying
In fathomless Flame-Oceans round him flying,
His inconceivable circumference withdrew:
Knew marvels of the fringe of flames that frisk
In ruddy dance about his moon-masked face,
Set on like petals round a sunflower's disc—
Each glorious petal shooting into space
A thousand times as far as Earth's vast globe is thick!—
Could tell of that Fire-firmament immense
Whose element-melting heat intense
Makes iron into vapour boil—
With alternating outrush and recoil

102

Now towering high in polar crests of gold,
Now spreading broad—a cestus round him rolled;
While Chasm-Spots that worlds were pebbles thrown into,
Gape wide beneath—close up—are many or few—
As crests or girdle take their turn,
With sway and resway rhythmic burn!—
Stupendous ever! aye, though Science fancy-quick
Foreguess full many a World
Worn out, and, crushed to cinders, flying fleet;
Or in cold black rotundity complete
Into his cooling bosom headlong hurled,
Just by collision to strike out fresh heat,
And feed with flame, renew and trim,
And keep awhile from falling dim
That monstrous unimaginable wick!
Say rather—for one system's billioned years keep bright
Its awful, mystic, God-created Light!”

VII.

“Naraka—Niflheim—Tartarus—or Tophet!
From what dead heart and poor unpicturing brain,—
Too dull to see or realize
Its own demoniac phantasies—
Of Bonze, Skald, Brahmin, talapoin, or prophet—
Goth, Syrian, Greek, or old Hindu,
Of Aryan or Semitic strain,—
Came singly or from all upgrew
That rank arch blasphemy and dream insane
Of torture-gulfs where Infinite Love
All human guess or gauge above

103

Preserves in fiery suffocation
The myriads of its own creation?
I care not—I; but when I came
On deck in darkness yesternight,
That very place appeared to be
Laid bare before my startled sight!
For far and wide in pale effulgence dire,
One boundless ghastly welter of white fire,
The Ocean rolled; a hoary Sea
Of awful incandescence rolled and broke away
In bursts of firespray—tongues of lambent flame
That writhed and tossed in burning play,
And with a baleful glare
Put out the stars—quenched what mild radiance fell
From the clear skies, as that unhallowed spell
Of blighting Superstition can outblaze
With its fierce coruscations of despair
The genuine rays
Of light from heaven that fall like dew,
Divine illuminings serene and true.

“And yet such thoughts did ill beseem
This vision—so would any deem,
And other lore and wiser learn,
Who o'er the taffrail marked the excess
And marvel of the loveliness
Of those swift-whirling volumes of soft light
Fast-flashing with gold star-drops sparkling bright
In myriads through the alabaster glow—
Those spangled gyres and wreaths of dazzling snow
That still in wide expanding trail
Went roaring off her stern
So grandly as our Vessel through

104

The surging phosphorescence flew;
Streaming behind her, as the snowy plumes
Of those rich birds the Aztecs old
Reared at their royal Town of Gold,
Stream when at dusk they slowly sail
Streaking the depth of Amazonian glooms.
Ah! surely no sound heart these glories seeing
Would thence derive the notion of a Being
Creating only to destroy;
Or framing Phlegethons and fire-washed caves
Swarming with frenzied Spirits thicker than these waves
With millions of medusæ all alight with joy!”

VIII.

“St. Lawrence! yes, I well remember
Thy Gulf—that morning in September.—
Fast flew our Ship careering lightly
Over the waters breaking brightly;
Alongside close as if their aim
Were but her vaunted speed to shame,
Sleek porpoises like lightning went
Cleaving the sunny element;
Now where the black bows smote their way
How would they revel in the roaring spray!
Like victors in the contest now
Dash swift athwart the flying prow;
Or springing forward three abreast
Shoot slippery o'er each foamy crest—
Shoot upwards in an airy arc
As three abreast they passed the bark:—

105

Pied petrels coursed about the sea
And skimmed the billows dexterously;
Sank with each hollow, rose with every hill,
So close, yet never touched them till
They seized their prey with rapid bill:—
Afar, the cloudy spurts of spray
Told that the grampus sported there
With his ferocious mates at play.
Meanwhile the breeze that freshly blew
From every breaking wavetop drew
A plume of smoke that straightway from the sun
The colours of the rainbow won,
So that you saw wherever turning
A thousand small volcanoes burning,
Emitting vapours of each hue
Of orange, purple, red and blue.
The Sky meanwhile was all alive
With snow-bright clouds that seemed to drive
Swiftly, as though the Heavens in glee
Were racing with the racing Sea:
Each flitting sight and rushing sound
Spread life and hope and joy around;
Ship, birds and fishes, Sky and Ocean
All restless with one glad emotion!—

“But what a change! when suddenly we spy
Apart from all that headlong revelry—
Pencilled above the sky-line, like a Spectre drear,
A silent Iceberg solemnly appear,—
Pausing ghost-like our greeting to await.—
The crystal Mountain, as we come anear
And feel the airs that from it creep
So chilling o'er the sunny Deep,

106

Discloses—while it slowly shifts,
Now blue, faint-glistening semilucent clifts,
Now melancholy peaks, dead-white and desolate.

“But comes it not, this Guest unbidden
This wanderer from a home far-hidden,
Dim herald of the mysteries of the Pole
With tidings from that cheerless region fraught—
Comes it not o'er us like the sudden Thought,
The haunting phantom of a World apart,
The blank and silent Apparition
That, ever prompt to gain serene admission,
Lurks on the crowded confines of the heart,
The many-pictured purlieus of the Soul;
Nay, sometimes thrusts its unexpected presence
Upon our brightest-tinted hours of pleasaunce?—

“That Polar realm is ransacked—known;
Our outside World of Matter, still
Lies pervious to determined will:
And shall the World of Spirit never
Its secrets yield to true endeavour?—
Five thousand years have doubtless shown
But little of that Spirit-zone:
For Science is a Child as yet
At hornbook rude and primer set:
And Man is just emerging from the past
Eternity of Darkness; from the vast
Æons and ages of a measureless Night,
Rubbing his eyes at the unwonted light:
How should he read all things aright
And say what can or cannot be—or utter
Out of his heart the Universe, whose growth

107

And whole existence yet is but the flutter
Of an ephemeral water-moth?
Take fifty thousand years—a span
In the conceivable career of Man;
Think you, with riper knowledge—skill profounder—
No grand explorers, bolder, sounder,
Will break into that Spirit-zone—reveal
Not iron-bound realms of ruthless ice and snow
Or narrow straits where freezing waters flow,
No shooting lights, or shifting gleams;
But prospects trustier than the dance and play
Protean of those dumb magnetic storms—
Auroras lovelier than our sanguine dreams
Of fondest Inspiration—Forms
Of Being more essentially divine
Than all that in Thought's topmost triumphs shine?
And prove how real the region whence our stray
And shadowy intimations find their way;
With what true signs and tokens rife
Those glimmering dreams and fine forebodings steal
Into the circle of our little day,
Into the glad familiar Sea of Life?’

108

Canto the Seventh. The Shipwreck.

1, 2. Ranolf shipwrecked. 3. Rescued by the island's inhabitants. 4. The ‘Pure Benevolence.’ 5. He resolves to see more of the country and people.

I.

How like white steam-spurts swiftly disappearing
When railway trains are rapidly careering,
Fumes, frets and melts away this Life of Man!

Bowling before the fresh fair breezes ran
Our Ranolf's stately Ship; and now was nearing
A range of rugged hills whose olive-green,
Sleeked over faintly with a sunny sheen,
Upon the starboard bow was seen.
Obliquely towards one shadow she was steering
That, darklier-painted, showed a harbour's mouth,
Because between her and that goal
There stretched a hidden dangerous shoal.
For towering topmasts of the Kauri pine
The Ship had voyaged to the verdant Isles,

109

The Sea-girt El Dorado of the South
Whose mountains famous since for many a mine
Of marvellous wealth, and reefs of riches, stand
The golden baits from bygone ages planned
To draw the swarms that, sweltering in distress
Cannot be won by nature's simpler wiles,
From climes where Life in very overstrife
To live chokes out redundant rival Life,
To this remote sweet wilderness,
This Life-deserted, Life-desiring land.

In deep blue sky the sun is bright;
The Port some few miles off in sight;
The pleasant Sea's subsiding swell
Of gales for days gone by may tell,
But on the bar no breaker white,
Only as yet a heavier roll
Denotes where lurks that dangerous shoal.
Alert with lead, and chart, and glass,
The Pilot seeks the well-known pass;
All his familiar marks in view
Together brought, distinct and true.
Erelong the tide's decreasing stream
Chafes at the nearer bank beneath;
The Sea's dark face begins to gleam
(Like tiger roused that shows his teeth)
With many a white foam-streak and seam:
Still should the passage, though more rough,
Have depth of water, width, enough.—
But why, though fair the wind and filled
The sails, though masts and cordage strain,
Why hangs, as by enchantment stilled,
The Ship unmoving?—All in vain

110

The helm is forced hard down; 'tis plain
The shoal has shifted, and the Ship
Has touched, but o'er its tail, may slip:
She strains—she moves—a moment's bound
She makes ahead—then strikes again
With greater force the harder ground.
She broaches to; her broadside black
Full in the breakers' headlong track;
They leap like tigers on their prey;
She rolls as on they come amain,
Rolls heavily as in writhing pain.
The precious time flies fast away—
The launch is swiftly manned and sent
Over the lee, with wild intent
To anchor grapplings where the tide
Runs smoother, and the Ship might ride
Secure beyond the raging bar,
Could they but haul her off so far.
The boat against her bows is smashed:
Beneath the savage surges dashed,
Sucked under by the refluent wave,
They vanish—all those seamen brave.

On—on—the breakers press—no check—
No pause—fly hissing o'er the wreck,
And scour along the dangerous deck.
The bulwarks on the seaward side,
Boats—rudder—sternpost iron-tied
With deep-driven bolts (how vain a stay!)
The weight of waters tears away.
Alas! and nothing can be done—
No downward-hoisted flag—no gun
Be got at to give greater stress

111

To that unheard demand for aid
By the lost Ship's whole aspect made—
Herself, in piteous helplessness,
One huge sad signal of distress.

Still on—and on—the tide's return
Redoubling now their rage and bulk,
In one fierce sweep from stem to stern
The thundering sheets of breakers roar,
High as the tops in spray-clouds soar,
And down in crashing cataracts pour
Over the rolling, tortured hulk.
Death glares in every horrid shape—
No help—no mercy—no escape!
For falling spars dash out the brains
Of some—and flying guns adrift
Or splinters crush them—slaughter swift
Whereof no slightest trace remains;
The furious foam no bloodshed stains:
Up to the yards and tops they go—
No hope—no chance of life below!
Then as each ponderous groaning mast
Rocks loosened from its hold at last,
The shrouds and stays, now hanging slack,
Now jerking, bounding, tensely back,
Fling off the helpless victims fast,
Like refuse on the yeast of death
That bellows, raves and boils beneath.
One hapless wretch around his waist
A knotted rope has loosely braced;
When from the stay to which he clings,
The jerking mast the doomed one flings,
It slips—and by the neck he swings:

112

Death grins and glares in hideous shape—
No hope—no pity—no escape!—

Still on and on—all day the same,
Through all that brilliant summer day
Beneath a sky so blithe and blue
The wild white whirl of waters flew;
In stunning volleys overswept
And beat the black Ship's yielding frame,
And all around roared, tossed, and leapt—
Mad-wreathing swathes of snow! affray
More dire than most disastrous rout
Of some conceivable array
Of thronged white elephants—as they
Their phalanx broke in warfare waged
In Siam or the Punjaub—raged
And writhed their great white trunks about,
With screams that shrill as trumpets rung,
And drove destruction everywhere
In maddened terror at the shout
Of turbaned hosts and torches' flare
Full in their monstrous faces flung;—
Wide horror! but to this, no less,
This furious lashing wilderness,
Innocuous-seeming—transient—tame!

Still on—still on—like fiends of Hell
Whiter than Angels—frantic—fell,
Through all that summer day the same
The merciless murderous breakers came!
And to the mizzen-top that swayed
With every breach those breakers made,
Unaided, impotent to aid—

113

The mates and Master clung all day.
There—while the Sun onlooking gay
Triumphant trod his bright highway;
There, till his cloudless rich decline,—
Faint in the blinding deafening drench
Of salt waves roaring down the whine
And creaking groans each grinding wrench
Took from the tortured timbers—there
All day—all day—in their despair,
The gently brave—the roughly good,
Collected, calm and silent stood.
That hideous doom they firmly face;
To no unmanly moans give way,
No frantic gestures; none disgrace
With wild bravado, vain display,
Their end, but like true men await
The dread extremity of Fate.
Alas! and yet no tongue can tell
What thoughts of life and loved ones swell
With anguish irrepressible,
The hearts these horrors fail to quell.
The Master urges them to prayer,
‘No hope on Earth—be Heaven your care!’—

And is it mockery—O but mark
Those masts and crowding figures, dark
Against the flush of love and rest
Suffusing all the gorgeous West
In tearful golden glory drest!
Such soft majestic tenderness,
As of a Power that longs to bless
With ardours of divinest breath
All but one raging spot of Death:—

114

For all the wide expanse beside
Is blushing, beauteous like a Bride;
And a fierce wedding-day indeed
It seems, of Life and Death—with none to heed.

And now the foam spurts up between
The starting deck-planks; downward bowed
The mighty masts terrific lean;
Then each with its despairing crowd
Of life, with one tremendous roar
Falls like a tower—and all is o'er.

II.

One of the worn despairing ring who round
Their chief upon the mizzen-top had found
A dizzy shelter in the pelting spray,
Had Ranolf borne that dreadful day;
Down with the headlong mast was thrown;
And as his consciousness flashed back again
(A moment in the act of falling gone)
He found himself almost alone
With desperate clutch still clinging to the top
Beneath its lee that fenced the lashing rain
Of breakers off—else all had been in vain.
'Mid tangled rigging, to the vessel's side
With violent efforts he contrived to glide;
Then, by the chains protected, in the shade
Of the green flying roof the wild waves made,
In that dark hollow's gloom a hideous space,
Steadying his thoughts and strength he clung,
While in his ears the roaring ceaseless race,
The driving avalanche that knew no stop,

115

With stunning dread reverberation rung.
Beneath him frequent timbers swung
In fragments to and fro; so, quick as thought,
He seized a lucky chance to drop
Into the weltering foam, and caught
A floating piece of plank, and kept
Despairing yet determined hold,
While it and he like lightning swept
To where the waves less wildly rolled:
A larger fragment next he gained;
Then, with what failing strength remained,
Straight towards that dear-bought harbour strained.

III.

Scarce half a mile the favouring tide
Had forged his drifting plank ahead,
When in the gathering gloom he spied
A big canoe with bulwarks red;
And heard the beat of paddles plied
With strong recurrence—right good will.
Half dead with cramp, fatigue, and chill,
He called; the paddles all were still.
He called again; a cheery strain
Gave answer as the rowers sung;
And forth the bounding vessel sprung
And shot his wayward plank beside
With swirling swiftness as a coot
Or wild duck will alighting shoot—
Ere it can stay its headlong way—
Along the ruffled water. Then
An eager crowd of deep-voiced men,
Dark-visaged, wild—in unknown tongue,

116

Their hoarse congratulations cried,
As safe on board the backed canoe
With rapid talk and much ado,
That kindly crew the Stranger drew.
With fiercer chaunt they pulled ashore;
There from his clothes the water wrung,
Lit fires, brought food, and on the floor
His bed of fresh-pulled ferns o'erlaid
With clean elastic mattings made;
Tried all that care or kindness can
Of genial Earth or generous Man—
Though one half desert, one half savage—
To smooth and smile away the pangs
Of grief and bodily pain and dread
Of horrible Ocean's wreck and ravage,
Whose shadow like a nightmare hangs
O'er one who lives, of many dead,
Just rescued from her ruthless fangs.

IV.

So ended that death-stricken day.—
But how felt Ranolf as he lay
Rescued and weary—and could scarcely deem
'Twas real, what seemed a wild tremendous dream,
That all his comrades bold had passed away?
Bursting with thanks, O doubt not, to the Power
Whose laws had let him live through such an hour:
And yet—to think of all that life so marred
And mangled, swept away like worthless chaff
While merciless mocking Nature did but laugh!—
“This pure Benevolence hits somewhat hard
It must be owned,” thought he, “or rather say

117

Inexorable laws must have their way.
Were any breach of law allowed, who knows
What infinite disasters would ensue!
Such certainty is safest, we suppose,
For creatures such as Men are. Trite and true!
Yet such a hell of havoc as we saw
To-day makes one half dubious of such law;
Results so dire, alas! who would not call
Demoniac still—if what we see were all!”

V.

When from the beach with swollen corpses strewn
Like seaweed, 'mid the waste of wreck upthrown
His sea-chest had been brought, and honestly
Returned him—as he much desired
More of this people and their land to see—
(Reports all made—leave asked and given first)
To the far neighbouring continent he sent,
To pay for food and service as required,
For woven stuffs and many an implement
And trinket these barbarians most admired.
Their language then he set himself to learn
With zeal, until the vessel's slow return;
And when in that, and their strange customs versed,
With followers often changed and cheaply paid
From place to place and tribe to tribe he strayed:
And so his way, amused and loitering, made
Into the interior far—to slake the thirst
Adventurous no disasters had allayed.

119

BOOK THE SECOND. THE SOUTH-SEA VILLAGERS.

121

Canto the First. The Rescue.

1. Ranolf, after a boar-hunt, his dog killed, fancies an after life for lower animals. 2. A new Italy. 3. His joyous and imaginative temperament. 4. A shriek. 5. Amohia. 6. A rescue. 7. Her story. 8. She returns to the Isle in the Lake. 9. His thoughts of her.

I.

“Glorious! this life of lake
And hill-top! toil and tug through tangled brake,
Dense fern, and smothering broom;
And then such rests as now I take
In sunflecked soft cathedral-gloom
Of forests immemorial! Noble sport
Boar-hunting! yet that furious charge, the last
Of the dead monster there had cut it short
For me, and once for all, belike,
Had not his headlong force impaled
The savage on my tough wood-pike
That, propped with planted knee and foot,
Its butt against a rata-root,
From chest to chine right through him passed

122

And nought his inch-thick hide availed,
Or ring-like tusks upthrusting through
The notches of his foaming lips,
By constant whetting planed away
To chisel-sharpness at their tips:
It weakened him—the knife-dig, too,
He caught when first commenced the fray;
When, as in haste I sprang astride
The narrowed gully—just a ditch
With flowering koromiko rich—
Between my feet the villain drove,
And fierce, with short indignant sniffs,
And grunts like muttering thunder, strove
To gain his haunts beyond the cliffs,
And foil the foes he fled from, yet defied.

“But Nim, my glorious bull-dog! Nim,
My mighty hunter of the boar,
Who never recked of life or limb
That old antagonist before!
That rip has finished his career—
His last boar-fight is fought; no more
He'll come to greet me as of yore,
Wriggling his lithe spine till his tail
Whipped his black muzzle in the excess
Of cringing canine happiness;
No more his genuine love express
With such dumb signs and tokens clear,
Mock bites and mouthings of the hand,
Easy as words to understand.
Strange, a mere dog should be so dear!

123

But he is dead, and—done with, must we say?
Poor victim of this universal demon-play
Of Life—my fate to-morrow, his to-day,
Which I, for sport, have sealed—as God (or no God, then
Say you?) that of his myriad worlds and men?
And ‘pluck’ like his, that nought could quail;
Good temper—honest humble love and truth—
These must not live again, forsooth!
No future for the Dog—but why?
Duty, our highest inborn feeling, who
Has stronger than this guardian true
To death? or can we in our own rejoice,
As sprung from self-determined choice?
That Self with so much bias made—
Our Will by strongest motive swayed?
Scarce higher than his, our claims, I fear,
To merit of our own appear.
Then compound, too, not simple, he,
A work complete no more than we,
(If stuff for hope therein may be),
Has not his nature, like our own,
Instincts at war, the lower with the high?
With trusts to be fulfilled, obedience shown—
The longing for the ramble, game forbidden,
Or bone, like miser's treasure, hidden?
And if, instead of eyes that often so
With solemn melancholy glow,
He had but tongue to speak with, who can show
He might not tell of hopes, and dim
Perceptions, yearnings, that no longer dumb,
He, too, may rise to human, and become
Erect some day, a ruler and a lord,
And, like his master, loved, adored,

124

A visible God and Providence to him—
Though swayed, no doubt, full oft, by rage, caprice and whim.

As good a faith or fancy 'twere
To think all conscious creatures—foul or fair,
One universal endless progress share;
In the procession headed by mankind,
Only a march or two behind;
Each rank of God's grand army onward bent
To higher states and stages—who knows where?—
Of free and fortunate development!”

II.

So mused young Ranolf as he lay at ease,
Profaning (must we needs confess?)
With chestnut-glossed pet meerschaum the pure breeze;
Enjoying in delicious cool no less
The mighty shade of old majestic trees,
Whose tops the skies beneath our feet immerse,
Far in the land, greenwaving, grand,
Upon our seeming world-medallion's rich reverse:
The ruder Italy laid bare
By that keen Searcher of the Seas
Whose tempest-battling, never-baffled keel,
Left half our planet little to reveal;
But restless roaming everywhere
Zigzagged the vast Pacific as he prest
With godlike patience his benignant quest;
True hero-god, who realized the notion
Its races feign of mythic Maui still,

125

And plucked up with a giant might of will
A hundred Islands from Oblivion's ocean!
Sea-king and sage—staunch huntsman of pure Fame,
Beating the waste of waters for his game,
Untrodden shores or tribes without a name;
That nothing in an island's shape,
Mist-muffled peak or faint cloud-cape
Might his determined thoughtful glance escape;
No virgin lands be left unknown,
Where future Englands might be sown,
And nations noble as his own!

III.

Loose-clad in careless sailor-guise,
But richly robed in that imperial dress
Of symmetry and suppleness
And sinewy strength that Nature's love supplies,
When at youth's prime, her work, superbly planned,
Takes the last touches from her Artist-hand,
Was our new roamer of the forest near
Calm Rotorúa's ferny strand.
To him was not denied, 'twas clear,
That best of boons at her command—
A joyous spirit sparkling like the day,
Set in well-tempered, finely-fashioned clay.
His fair complexion, slightly tanned
By central suns' and oceans' glare;
His eyes' gray gleams and amber hair,
Were such as brighten best where gloom and cold
And sombre clouds harsh northern skies enfold:
But curling locks and lip, and glance
Keen for all beauty everywhere;

126

The straight harmonious features—though perchance
Squarer than pure proportion asked, in cheek
And brow, more thought and firmness to bespeak—
Of southern fervour and quick feeling told.
His love of the mysterious—vast—whate'er
Of solemn and sublime could bear
The soul aloft on wings of thrilling awe;
The restless daring that his reason led
To question all he heard and read;
The senses potent to divine the springs
Of pleasure in a thousand things,
Seemed from each clime some elements to draw
Like Gothic metal run in Grecian mould.
In active body—vigorous mind,
Such seeming contrasts he combined;
Still, in his face whate'er expressions shone,
And to what moods soever he was prone,—
'Twas hardy gladness by strong will controlled—
A summer torrent bounding on incessant
Through rampart layers of glittering stone,
Seemed the habitual and abiding one.
Blithe Hope upon his forehead bold
Sate like a sunbeam on a gilt mosque-crescent;
And oft, in reverie, if he gazed apart,
His eye would kindle as in admiration
Of some past scene to fancy present,
Or glory glowing in the future distance;
As if one breaking morn of gold
Were round Life's whole horizon rolled
As if his pulse beat music, and his heart
Clashed cymbal-bursts of exultation
In the mere rapture of existence!

127

IV.

A shriek within the covert near,
A second, third, assailed his ear;
Straight for the sound at once he dashed;
Through tangled boughs and brushwood crashed,
And lopped and slashed the tangles black
Of looped and shining supplejack,
Till on a startling scene he came,
That filled his soul with rage and shame.

Her mantle flung upon the ground,
Her graceful arms behind her bound,
With shoulders bare, dishevelled hair,
There stood a Maiden of the land,
More stately fair than could elsewhere
Through all its ample range be found.
Two of his comrades, hired amid
The tribes whose chieftains held command
O'er all the vales those mountains hid—
Those western mountains forest-crowned—
Wild striplings, who, uncurbed from birth,
Deemed foulest wrong but food for mirth
So that their listless life it stirred,
Were basely busy on each hand,
With flax-blades binding to a tree
The Maid who strove her limbs to free.
They knew her—for they oft had heard
Of that surpassing form and face;

128

They knew the hate, concealed or shown,
Between her people and their own;
The feuds, when open war would cease,
That smouldered in precarious peace;
They knew the track by which the chase
Had lured them to that lonely place,
Was so unused, so tangled, rough,
They doubtless would have time enough,
And might without pursuit retrace
Their steps through mountain-woods, so dense,
No wrong would be suspected thence,
No outrage dreamt of. So they thought—
If such a thoughtless impulse wild
Of mischief can a thought be styled—
They fancied, when the Maid they caught
At that secluded spot, alone
With one slave-girl (who shrieking fled,
While after her a third accomplice sped
Lest she the alarm too soon should spread)
It was a chance to win a name,
Through many a tribe some facile fame—
Let but their foreign friend agree,
If such a captive to their chief they led,
At his behest, dispose, to be.

V.

Not more incensed—scarce lovelier in her wrath—
The silver-bow'd snow-Goddess seen
By rapt Actæon at her awful bath;
Not prouder looked—scarce fiercer in her pride,
The yellow-haired Icenian Queen,
Stung by the tortures she defied;

129

Than did that flaxen-kilted Maid—
A warmer Dian—at her russet rise
Dun-shining through autumnal mist;
A young Boadicea sunnier skies
Had into browner beauty kissed.
So flashed her eyes with scorn and ire,
They seemed, as deep in purple shade
The slanting sunbeams left the wood
And gloomy yew whereby she stood,
Two glowing gems of hazel fire.
And though a single sparkling tear—
Upon each lower eyelid checked,
Whose thick silk fringe, a coalblack streak,
So darkly decked her flushing cheek
In mellow contrast to its clear
Rich almond brown—alone confest
Some softer feelings lurked among
The passions that her bosom wrung;
Yet indignation's withering flame
So towered and triumphed o'er the rest,
Did so enkindle and inform
Her heaving breast, her writhing frame,
Just then, you would almost have deemed,
Her very tresses as they streamed,
With lightnings from that inner storm
And not with flecks of sunset, gleamed.

“Slaves!” she was saying: “this to me!
Me, Amohia! Know you not
The daughter of the ‘Sounding Sea?’
Is Tangi-möana forgot?
When he shall this vile outrage know,
Your homes shall blaze, your hearts'-blood flow;

130

A life for every hair shall pay
Of her you've dared insult this day!”

VI.

Swift to her aid our Wanderer sprung,
Aside those ruffians roughly flung;
Cut, tore away, the bonds that laced
Those tender arms, that slender waist;
Reproached, rebuked with sarcasm strong
The culprits for their coward wrong;
The Maid with soothing words addrest—
Regret and deep disgust expressed
At what disturbed her—so distrest;
By every gesture, look, declared
How much her grief and pain he shared;
Urged all that might with most effect
Her anger stay, her grief allay,
And smooth her ruffled self-respect.

And if, while thus the Maid he freed
With eager haste, and soon replaced
Her mantle, tagged with sable cords
Of silky flax in simple taste,
He could not choose but interfuse
Some looks amid his cheering words,
Keen admiration's natural meed
To one with so much beauty graced;
Think you, this stranger's form and mien
Could fail to make their influence felt;
Unconscious though she might have been
Of their magnetic power to melt,
Pierce, permeate her spirit's gloom,

131

And all her brightening breast illume,
Till docile, ductile, it became
To his persuasive voice's sway—
Mild breathings of discretion, reason's claim;
As on a summer day
The silent sunbeams sink into and fill
A snowy cloud, and make it lighter still
For gentlest breeze to bear away?
And pleased was he, surprised to mark
How swiftly vanished every trace
Of passion so tempestuous, dark;
Its shadow floating off a face
Where, sooth to say, at any time
It seemed as alien, out of place,
As some great prey-bird's, haply seen,
Not mid the awful regions where he breeds,
Sky-sweeping mountains, towering peaks sublime,
But in a land with daisied lawns and meads
And rippling seas of poppied corn serene.

VII.

And all her story soon was told;
How she had left Mokoia's isle
That central in the lake alone
Rose high—a bristling mountain-hold
With fort and fosse—a dark green boss
On that bright shield of azure-stone;
Had left the isle, the time to while
With one companion in her light canoe;
While in a larger came a fisher-crew
She wiselier should have kept in view.

132

But they two of the sport had soon
Grown weary in the glaring noon;
So landed, from the sun's attacks
Their splendour-puckered eyebrows to relax
In the refreshing grateful shade
A clump of trees not distant made.
Thence to a spot amid the level hills
Of Rangikáhu, where a hotspring fills,
Near a deserted settlement,
A square stone-tank ('twas Miroa's whim), they went
To boil some sweet roots which they found
As they expected in a patch
Of old abandoned garden-ground.
That done, they strolled the forest through,
And strolled to little purpose too;
Had tried a parrot for a pet to catch
In vain; had seen, by marshy glade
Or woodside brake, look where they might,
No tangle of convolvulus to twine
Into rich coronals of cups aglow
With deep rose-purple or delicate white
Pink-flushed as sunset-tinted snow;
No clematis, so lovely in decline,
Whose star-flowers when they cease to shine
Fade into feathery wreaths silk-bright
And silvery-curled, as beauteous. And they knew
The early season could not yet
Have ripened the alectryon's beads of jet,
Each on its scarlet strawberry set,
Whence sweet cosmetic oils they press
Their glittering blue-black hair to dress

133

Or give the skin its velvet suppleness.
So they had loitered objectless,
And chaunting songs or chatting strayed
Till by his rude associates met.

VIII.

Her simple story told, the Maid
Asked in her turn the Wanderer's name;
Tried to pronounce it too; but still
With pretty looks of mock distress
And scorn at her own want of skill,
And tempting twisting lips no stain
Of tattoo had turned azure—found
“Ranolf” too strange and harsh a sound
For her harmonious speech to frame;
So after various efforts vain
“Ranóro” it at last became,
The nearest imitation plain
Her liquid accents could attain.
Thus, when at length they reached the shore,
Had found and freed and comforted
The damsel who at first had fled
(Poor little Miroa, weeping sore),
And launched the small canoe once more,
'Twas with a farewell kind and gay
She bade the stranger “Go his way;”
'Twas with her radiant ready smile
She started for the mountain-isle,
Which then, one mass of greenish gold,
Shone out in sharp relief and bold

134

Against the further hills that lay
In solemn violet-gloom—grim, dark and cold.

IX.

So towards his tent his steps he bent;
Nor marvel if as home he went
His thoughts to her would still recur:—
“—But Amohia! what a glorious creature
In every gesture, every feature!
Such melting brilliant eyes! I swear
They cast a shadow from whate'er
They rest upon! I do believe they throw
Such shifting circlets of soft light
On what she looks at, as a sunbeam weaves
On the green darkness of the noonday woods
Through chinks in the transparent leaves!
And then her hair! to see it but unbound!
Such black abundant floods
Of tresses making midnight all around
For those twin stars to shine through! while between
In glimpses the fair neck was seen
Just as at night upon those white
And windheaped hummocks of glimmering sand—
Thickflowing sand—so finely sifted
By the gales whereby 'twas drifted—
Soft patches of pale moonlight stand
Beside their sable shadows. Then her teeth!
All things that most of whiteness boast
How dull and dim beside them! The far wreath
Of snow upon those peaks eternal—
The sea-foam creaming round the coast—
The wave-bleached shell upon it tost—

135

No, none of these—perhaps the kernel
Of a young cocoanut when newly broken
Would best their blue-white purity betoken.
But these are graces to be left unspoken
Beside the soul—the spirit's charm
That from some well of witchery internal
Comes dancing up—confiding—warm,
All diamond dew of pure delight upspringing—
Such sparkling spray of kindliness outflinging!—
How frank and noble is her face!
And what a sunny pride and sweetness lies
In those open brilliant eyes!
Her voice chimes like a merry bird's;
How winning are her cheerful words!—
With what a blithe and stately grace
She drew her glistening flaxen mat,
With chequered border decked,
Into the hollows of her wavy form,
And stepped away erect!—
A maiden of a million that!—”

Strange power of beauty! in a moment's space
It photographs itself upon the brain,
And though with limnings soft as light, imprints—
Burns in, such deep encaustic tints,
The finest line, the tenderest stain,
No future impress can displace,
No wear and tear of Time efface!

136

Canto the Second. The ‘Sounding Sea.’

1. A great Maori Chieftain; what he prides himself on. 2. Worst native vices now extinct. 3. Tangi persists in his native faith. 4. A born Leader. 5. A thunderstorm. Amo out on the Lake. Tangi exorcises the God of Storms. 6. Her return with a messenger.

I.

A fine old sturdy stalwart stubborn Chief
Was Tangi-Möana, the ‘Sounding Sea’:
Both brave and wise in his degree.
In Council calm, no windy waterspout,
He loved with some bold figure brief,
In words—or blunt symbolic act without—
To clench and quench discussion quietly.
But there so careless of distinction, he
Was a conspicuous, restless, fiery guiding-Star
And rocklike rallying-point in war.

His many merits how shall we repeat?
In all that most adorns a Chief complete.
Highborn—of ancient perfect pedigree,
The carved and saw-notched stick, his family-tree
And roll heraldic, where each tooth expressed
A male progenitor, concisely showed
How still through these his lineage proud had flowed.
For not a single gap confessed
The rank did ever in a female vest,
Since from that blissful Isle divine

137

Far o'er the azure hyaline—
That sunlit vision seen sublime
Faint glimmering through thick mists of Time,
The cradle of his race, in legends yet
Embalmed, a fond ideal for regret;—
Since from Hawaiki, tempest-driven,
Or roaming restless for a wider home,
Five hundred years ago had come
The mighty Founder of his line,
Commanding (one of those primeval Seven)
His old hereditary grand Canoe.

To all the unkempt Aristocrats around
Who could a better model be
Of all befitting their degree?
For costlier mantles, richer in design,
No chief more carelessly possessed:
None with a choicer feather-crest
Would, when occasion needed it, be crowned;
Had those rare plumes in heir-loom chest preserved
More richly carved, more elegantly curved;
There, with green nephrite pendants safely hid,
Though loose its oval-shaped, oil-darkened lid—
His sole tapu a far securer guard
Than lock and key of craftiest notch and ward.
And none gave ampler feasts—displayed
War-clubs of more transparent jade:
And finer closer spirals of dark blue
Were never seen than in his cheek's tattoo;
Fine as if engine-turned those curves declared
No cost to fee the Artist had been spared;

138

That many a basket of good maize had made
That craftsman careful how he tapped his blade,
And many a greenstone trinket had been given
To get his chisel-flint so deftly driven.

II.

Now at the time whereof we tell,
The white man's creed—the potent spell
Of civilised communion—had begun
Their work about the borders of the land.
Before that higher light, and influence bland,
As night recedes long ere you see the sun,
The most revolting vices of the race,
(Among ev'n those who never would embrace
The new belief)—child-murder and the feast
That sinks the cannibal below the beast
His better there,—the ghoullike foul disgrace,
Had slunk away abashed and wholly ceased.
As, when you turn upon a sea-creek's shore,
Some limpet-crusted boulder o'er,
The reptile life that swarmed and skulked beneath
So close that nothing there had seemed to breathe—
Sea-centipedes and purple crabs and worms
Threadlike blood-red—and limbless fleshy forms,
Swiftly or slowly—all before the light,
Shrink—wriggle—scuttle sidelong out of sight;
So had those viler vices taken flight.

III.

And Tangi and his tribe thus much had gained,
Those vices lost, but all their gods retained.
A love of change was never fault of his,
And least he fancied such a change as this.

139

Once when a zealous teacher from the North
The terrors of his creed had thundered forth—
Unfolded with keen zest and kind desire
To save his hearers from so sad a fate,
His pleasant faith in everlasting fire,
And painted all the pangs the damned await—
While horror blanched the cheeks of half the crowd,
Old Tangi roared with laughter long and loud:
That Hell of theirs, he said, might be a place
Wholesome and fitting for the white man's race,
No Maori was half bad enough to be
Doomed to so horrible a destiny:
Had a good Spirit destined for such woe
His children after death, he long ago
Had sent some trusty friend to let them know;
But he for his part would have nought to do
With any Atua, whether false or true,
Who could delight his direst foe to see
The victim of such monstrous cruelty.
And when he learnt what adverse sects prevailed
And how each other's doctrines they assailed,
He held his hand out, with the fingers spread—
“So many ways to heaven you teach,” he said;
“When you have fixed the right one and none doubt it,
'Twill then be time for me to think about it.”

Sometimes indeed when young hardheaded minions
From seaside tribes would urge these new opinions,
Our Chief, for argument was not his forte,
With calm remonstrance tried to cut them short:
What all their ancestors and his believed

140

Why could not they? that which was good enough
For them, might well content, as he conceived,
Such youngsters;—husky grew his voice and gruff:
“What give up all our good old ways—the charms
And ceremonies practised all our lives
To make our Men all warriors, brave in arms,
Our Women skilful, chaste, industrious wives;—
Give up our wars—war-dances—tauas—taboo,
Whence all our wealth, and power, and fame accrue,
For these new notions! were they all to cease
For this effeminate creed of love and peace!”—
But when the good old Chief found all he felt
So strongly had no power to move or melt
His tough opponents, he the point pursued
No further—but with self-complaisance stout
Closed with that comfort—wherein oft no doubt
Much abler controversialists conclude—
“'Twas self-sufficiency—'twas downright mere
Conceit that would not see a case so clear—
'Twas rage for talk, or love of contradiction,
That would not be convinced”—by his conviction!

And so a hearty heathen he remained,
And those new whimsies quietly disdained;
He fed his Gods and fee'd his priests so well,
What was to him the white Man's heaven or hell?
A Priest himself and half a God or quite,
Did not the elements confess his might?
At least all said so—and if failure wrought
Misgiving, still desire constrained his thought;
The failure proved the counteracting spite

141

Of rival Gods into collision brought,—
Against his own pretensions argued nought.
Nor wonder this should be; when low and base
Man's notions of a God, and vain and high
Those of himself, as with a barbarous race
And minds uncultured ever is the case,
Men may believe their own divinity:
Manhood and Godhood come so near together
They may be made to mingle and agree
Without much stretch of Faith's or Fancy's tether.
And thus our Chieftain felt; if he excelled
In attributes for which his Gods were held
Divine—might he not be their equal too?
Could he not at his pleasure save or slay,
A Lord of life and death as well as they?
And for those elements—'twas but mistaking
The still unknown and so obscure relations
Between the Spirit mystical outbreaking
Through all the manifold manifestations
Of Nature, and the surer Spirit illuming
His own as mystic Being, and mastery thence,
In pride of his superior excellence,
Over that other phase of Spirit assuming.

IV.

Such was this Tangi—such ‘The Sounding Sea’;
Of form almost gigantic he—
Bull-necked, square-jawed, bold-eyed, firm-lipped, high-browed,
His looks proclaimed his character aloud.
And when he stood forth in full height and pride
In flowing vest of silky flax, undyed,

142

But crimson-spotted with round knobs of wool,
Black points of cord, alternate, hanging free;
And o'er it, down to the brown ankles bare
A mantle of white wild-dog fur well-dressed,
Its skirt's broad rim tan-hued; his snowy hair
Crowned with a jet-black arching crest
Of hoopoe-feathers stuck upright,
Their tips a crescent of pure white;
And in his hand, to order with or smite,
The greenstone baton broad of war or rule,
Green, smooth and oval as a cactus leaf—
Did he not look, aye, every inch a Chief?
Did not each glance and gesture stamp him then,
Self-heralded a God-made King of Men?

V.

A thunderstorm was sweeping o'er the Lake,
The hills had whitened off in sudden mist
That soon grew leaden-livid; flake on flake
The fine spray smoked along the watery floor—
Till plumb-down rushed the rain's impetuous pour;
A thousand claps of thunder seemed to break
Confusedly all at once—with clattering roar
Tumbled about the air or groaning rolled,
As if some race Titanic storming Heaven
From ponderous unimaginable wains
On rocky grating causeways headlong driven,
Shot crashing mountains on the skyey plains;
Or if the tumult for a moment stopped
You heard the torrent rain how loud it hissed,
As if a hecatomb of bulls at least
Were broiling for some sacrificial feast;

143

And all about the liquid lightnings dropped
In points like grapestones shaped, of molten gold.
But Tangi, while the tempest raged, was told
That where his daughter might be no one knew—
They feared, upon the Lake in her canoe.
Straightway the stoutest of his clansmen staunch
He sent in search of her their boats to launch;
Then set himself to charm away the Storm;
And it was rare to see the grand old Chief
Now in the haughtiness of fancied power
To cope with Nature in her fiercest hour,
Quick pouring forth wild-ringing chaunt on chaunt
To bid Tawhiri—God of Storms—Avaunt!
Now in a rival storm of rage and grief
Threatening—reproaching—all his stalwart form
Dilating with defiance: outstretched arms
And head thrown back and milk-white fleece of hair,
And bloodshot eyes and dark-blue visage bare
Lit up by fits in the blue lightning's glare!—
So plies he his monotonous rude charms—
So on the Storm his vehement passion vents,
Hoarsely upbraiding the hoarse elements.

VI.

But soon the light Canoe they saw
Come bounding o'er the breaking wave;
There sate, with looks of mingled awe
And wild delight, the Maiden brave!
With rapid change from side to side
A native youth the paddle plied—
A stranger, and his hearty will
Seemed matched with equal strength and skill.

144

Attentive to his least command
The Maiden grasped with one firm hand
The sheet that held the shortened sail
That strained and tugged beneath the gale,
And with the other strove to bale
Fast as she could the water, still
Threatening the little bark to fill.
Begemmed with spray her dark hair streamed;
Her beauteous cheek no paler seemed
Though rain and spray-drops o'er it teemed,
And all around the lightnings gleamed:
For neither lightning, rain nor spray
Could turn her from her task away.

Still stood the sail and bending mast,
And they the beach were nearing fast.
Then through the waters' boiling strife
The clansmen rushed at risk of life;
A struggling, swimming, diving crowd,
They seized with acclamations loud
The gunwale of the light canoe;
On either side, a dancing row
Of rough black heads now rising through
Now sunk beneath the foamy snow,
With great triumphant shouts they bore
Canoe and Maiden to the shore.

145

Canto the Third. The Magician.

1. Death of Amo's affianced husband. 2. Dirge for a Chief dishonoured by a peaceful death. 3. Amo released from the Tapu (taboo). 4. The Tapu's power and use. 5. Kangapo. 6. Disgusted that the Chief's death will falsify his predictions. 7. Tries new auguries. 8. Gets answers from spirits—how.

I.

Then Amohia's comrade told how he
To Rotorua's Chief of high degree
From Tapu-ae by Taupo's Lake, his home,
A messenger of great sad news was come.
How he by chance upon the other side
Had in her bark the Maid espied,
And she had offered him a cast across.
And then he told the lamentable loss
Of great Te Rehu—Taupo's Chief, to whom
That Maiden, as they knew so well,
From the first promise of her matchless bloom
Had been betrothed and ‘tapu’—It befel
In this wise. Sometime since, continuous rain
Softening a mountain, it had slipped amain

146

Down and across a deep ravine and dammed
A running stream, and all its waters jammed
Between the hills, till thus repressed and choked
Into the porous mound they slowly soaked;
And one fine night when all was still and dim,
The saturate mighty mass had burst away,
And rushing down the vale, while fast asleep
Te Rehu and his nearest kindred lay
Least dreaming such a doom, had swallowed him
And them and their whole village in a deep
And stifling yellow mass of fluent clay,
So overwhelming, sudden, viscous, they
Could neither float, nor rise in it nor swim.

II.

Astonished, shocked at such a tale,
At such a death for so renowned a man,
Low murmurs through the crowding hearers ran:
And when the storm had to the hills retreated,
Though still it rumbled, lumbering heavily
In the back chambers of the sky,
With downcast looks in treble circle seated,
And grief, if false yet truly counterfeited,
The summoned clansmen sung their song of wail.
One, standing in the midst the slow sad chaunt began:—

“Death, degrading, mournful, gloomy!
Death unfit for song or story,
Death for a dog—a cur—a slave—
Not for the brave!—”

147

And all took up the chorus harsh and strong,
In perfect time discharging groan on groan,
While rolled a distant thunderpeal along
In kindred and scarce deeper tone:

“Death, O Death, how hateful, gloomy!
Death for a dog—a slave—a slave!

Then rose the single voice in prouder strain,
Just as the lightning flashed again:

“Had you died the death of glory
On the field of battle gory,
Died the death a chief would choose,
Not this death so sad and gloomy,—
Then with tuft and tassel plumy,
Down of gannet—sea-king's feather,
Gaily-waving, snowy-flecking,
Every deep-red gunwale decking,—
Then a hundred brave canoes
With elated
Warriors freighted,
Like one man their war-chaunt chiming,
Fierce deep cries the paddles timing,
While the paddles' serried rows
Like broad bird's-wings spread and close,
Through the whitening
Waves like lightning
Had been darting all together,
Forward through the foam together,
All in quest of vengeful slaughter
Tearing through the tortured water!”

148

And from the dusky figures seated round,
With savage satisfaction in the sound—
A stern deep pride with sadness shadowed o'er,
Like volleys fired above a soldier's grave,
Rang out the chorussed thundering groans once more:

“Ha! a hundred brave canoes—
Crowding, crashing,
Darting, plashing,
Darting, dashing through the wave!
Forward—forward all together,
All in quest of foemen's slaughter,
They had cleft the foamy water
Seeking vengeance for the brave,
For the brave—the brave—the brave!”

III.

But while with stern staccato notes this song
Of simulated sorrow rolled along,
A genuine gladness cheered one secret breast,
One with a grief as genuine was deprest.
To Amohia 'twas pure joy to be
At length from that detested contract free,
Released from nuptials the reluctant maid
On various pretexts had so long delayed.
For the good Chief could ne'er be reconciled
To use coercion with his darling child,
Who by the dreadful ‘tapu’ firmly bound
Moved—a bright creature, consecrate and crowned,
Inviolate and charmed, to all around.

149

IV.

The “tapu” was a fearful spell,
Potent as creeds or guards or gold
The power of Priest and Chieftain to uphold.
The terrors of that ever-present Hell
Outdid the threats of distant ones
That faintly flame in far futurity—
As might the roar of pointed guns
A word would on your body bring to bear,
The noise of thunder in the sky.
And never did despotic cunning plan
A fouler system for enslaving man,
Than this mysterious scheme of fear and hate,
The basis of their savage Church and State.
True, the strange custom had its brighter side
When for good ends resistless 'twas applied:
What could compel the masses to combine
Like it, their labour for each grand design—
The great canoe—the long sea-sweeping seine
Or hall for council where the chiefs convene?
Where could true rights a trustier guard procure,
Corruptless and invincible and sure?
Yet most 'twas used as stonghold and as stay
For the Aristocrats' and Hierarchs' sway;
For though swift-gathering relative and friend
Would prompt upon a culprit's tribe descend
And, plundering by strict rule with much ado,
Avenge each minor breach of this “taboo,”
Yet, let but rank or priesthood be profaned,
A direr doom the wretch who sinned sustained,

150

More terrible than dungeons, gibbets, chains,
Material penance, penalties or pains.
No high divinity that hedges kings
Could with this sheltering deviltry compare,
Or forge for tyranny a subtler yoke.
For chief and Priest at will or whim could dower
Sticks—stones—most treasured or most trivial things
With deadliest excommunicative power:
And whoso touched them and the “tapu” broke
Became anathema—accursed and banned—
Infected and infectious; with a pang
Of livelier terror shrunk from—shunned—than e'er
Plague-spotted patient—canine madness—fang
Of rattle-snake or cobra: Fiends were there
To torture them; obedient, at the Chief's command.
The “Wairua,” Spirits of the myriad dead,—
And all the other invisible Spirits dread,
All mystic powers that fill the Earth and Air,
The “Atua,”—waited but a hint from him
To dart into their victim—waste and tear
His stricken vitals, cankering life and limb.
Had not the boldest who from want of heed
Some solemn “tapu” had infringed, been known
When conscious of the sacrilegious deed,
To die outright from horrible fear alone?—
So well these savage Lords had learned
How nature's mystic terror might be turned
To means their own dominion to increase.
Unseen executors of their caprice,
Agents impalpable upheld their cause;
Departed Spirits were their dumb Police,
And Ghosts enforced their lightest Laws.

151

V.

But he whose grief was most sincere
The news of that unwonted death to hear,
Was Kangapo the “Tóhunga”—a Priest
And fell Magician famous far and near;
A Thaumaturge regarded with more fear
Than any living or than most deceased.
Men whispered that his very body swarmed
(Crammed as a war-canoe with warriors armed)
With evil spirits rustling thick
As blue-flies buzzing in a wayside corse:
And some more credulous would trembling tell
How when demoniac inspiration quick
And strong, in frenzy and full force
Rushed on him (it was vouched for well)
The grass would wither where his shadow fell;
Or, were the sliding shutter of his door
Just then left open, by the river side,
Such deadly emanations would outpour,
Mere strangers chancing in canoes to glide
Beneath the house, had stiffened there and died.

These tales were Kangapo's delight and pride.
And yet his mien that dread renown belied;
So calm and mild; his eyes deepset and dark
Abstacted still and unobservant seemed;
But those who dared to watch him long would mark
How those dim eyes would on a sudden shift

152

And glitter like a lizard's; then again
Fall still and calm; and yet that glance so swift
Seemed quite enough, as rapidly it gleamed,
To single out and give his scheming brain
All they could closely hide as clearly see.
His voice was gentle too, and low, and sweet;
So men compared him to the tutu-tree,
Whose luscious purple clusters hang so free
And tempting, though with hidden seeds replete
That numb with deadly poison all who eat.
And then his pace was stealthy, noiseless, soft,
So that a group of talking people oft
Turned round and found him, none knew how or whence,
Close by them, with his chilling influence:
As that great wingless loathsome locust bare,
That scoops from rotting trees his pithy fare,
With elephantine head and horny jaws
And prickly high-propped legs—is sometimes found
Upon your limbs or clothes, in sluggish pause,
Inside the house; though none upon the ground
Have marked him crawling slow from his retreat,
The fire-logs, when dislodged by growing heat.

VI.

But Kangapo had reason to bewail;
For had he not a hundred times foretold
That should those Western Tribes his tribe assail,
Those famed Waikáto, foemen from of old,
Stout Tangi in the contest should prevail?
And whence derived he confidence to make

153

That prophecy so clear, beyond mistake?
'Twas from the doubled strength his tribe he knew
Would gain from an alliance close and true
With the brave borderers of the Central Lake.
And what inducement could be found so strong
To that alliance as the union, long
Desired and schemed for, and as long delayed,
Of Taupo's Chief with this surpassing maid?
But now his plans were cut up, branch and root:
And he must task his plotting wits again
To find some other project to maintain
The safety of his tribe—his own repute.
For if he failed so notably, a stain
Would on his fame indelibly remain.
One thing was clear; he must not lose this lure,
This bait, some splendid Kingfish to secure
Among the Chiefs,—this matchless girl, on whom
Himself, o'ermastered by her beauty's bloom
Had sometimes cast a longing eye, in vain;
For not his utmost art could passage gain
Even to the threshold of her fair regard;
His calm, insidious, slow addresses barred
Their own access: her very flesh would creep
Antipathetic, shrinking to its ward
Instinctive, from his flatteries sly and deep.

VII.

So anxious now his auguries he plied
For some forecast of fate his course to guide.
First, by the solitary shore, he drove
His gods into the ground: each god a stick

154

Knobbed with a carved and tattoo'd wooden head,
With fillet round the neck of feathers red;
Then to each idol he attached a string;
And in monotonous accents high and quick
His incantations wild began to sing.
But still the impatient patient Sorcerer strove
With frequent jerks to make it yield a sign
Whence might be drawn an omen of success:
Nor this so difficult as you divine,
Nor need the gift his Atua much distress.
The slightest hint a Priest for answer took;
Let but a grass-green parrakeet alight
To pluck from some wild coffee-bush in sight,
And nibble with his little moving hook,
The scarlet berries; let some kingfisher
Slip darting from the post whose summit grey
He crowned—a piece of it—the live-long day—
Long bill protruding from his shoulders high,
Watching the lake with sleepy-vigilant eye—
Looking so torpid and so loath to stir,
Till that faint silver twinkle he descry;
Let, gold-cuirassed, some hard ichneumon-fly
Drag with fierce efforts to its crevice nigh
A velvet-striped big spider, sore distrest,
Struggling in vain and doomed to be the nest
And food of that wasp-tyrant's worm new-hatched;
Nay, less significant the sign might be
For which the keen-eyed Sorcerer sung and watched;
A passing cloud—a falling leaf—the key
Might offer to unlock the mystery,
Which with his wishes surely would be matched.

155

VIII.

Nor could our Augur set his mind at ease
With simple divinations such as these:
And he was almost tempted to invoke
The Spirits of the Dead who sometimes spoke
Through him, the Arch-Magician and Adept;
Half tempted in his own case to accept
Answers his own ventriloquism feigned;
Ready to square his faith to his desire,
And half believe supernal spirits deigned
To prompt his organs and his speech inspire:—
Could nothing, think you, less than mind unsound
Sensation with volition thus confound?—
But this he chose another Priest to try.
So in their midnight haunted chamber they
Summoned the dead, and drank in mournfully
What the faint hollow voices seemed to say;
Now like the nightwind through the crannied roof
In longdrawn whistling whisper sighing by,
Swelling and sinking, near and then aloof;
Now melancholy murmuring underground,
Then dying off up in the starry sky.

Such the success impostors still achieve;
Such Nature's final Nemesis for all
Who teach to others what they half believe,
To keep them fast in Superstition's thrall.
From such a doom dreaming their own reprieve,
Into the pits themselves have dug they fall;
Their own deceptions do themselves deceive.

156

Canto the Fourth. A Woodland Jaunt.

1. A new Nausicaa. Poi or ball-play. 2. Ranolf's sudden visit. 3. Tangi's greeting. 4. A party to the mainland. Scenery. 5. Native superstitions. All Nature informed with Spirits. 6. Supernatural Legends. Man's ideas of ‘God’ grow with his growth. 7. Theirs of the rudest kind. Maui: Tinirau and his pet whale: Pitaka the Dragon-slayer: Hatu, the boy stolen by a witch-giantess. 8. Miroa's tale of the ‘Maid-in-the-Moon.’

I.

With merry laughter rang the air
And feminine soft voices sweet;
And acclamations here and there
Of loud delight at skill more rare,
Some happy hit or dexterous feat;
And little shrieks at failing luck,
The baffled aim, the striker struck;
As Amohia on the ground
Amid her damsels, scarlet-crowned
With kowhai-flowers, a lively ring
Playing at ‘poi,’ sent flying round

157

The ornamented ball o'erwound
And worked with vary-coloured threads,
And loosely hung with dangling string
Made fast above their rich-tressed heads—
Fast to a single lightsome yew,
One lone totára-tree that grew
Beneath the hillside rising high
Mid rocks and flowering shrubs. Hard by
A little summer-dwelling peeped
Deep-red, from foliage o'er it heaped
Deep-green and lustrous—trees that bore
In tiny flowers their promised store,
Large berries of autumnal gold.
Verandah-pillars, barge-boards broad,
And balcony and balustrade,
All rough and crusted with a load
Of carved adornment quaint and bold—
Concentric fret or face grotesque
In rich red-ochred arabesque
Relieved with snow-white touches—showed
Gaily against that glittering shade,
The thick karákas' varnished green.
This cheerful cot, when days were hot,
With its interior cool and clean,—
Its floor, for fragrant orange-scent
With faint tawhíri-leaves besprent;
Its roof, and walls, so neatly lined
(Between pilasters white and red)
With tall pale yellow reeds close-laid
And delicately intertwined
And diamond-laced with sable braid

158

Of leaves supplied, when split and dyed,
By that thick-tufted parasite
Which with its fleshy blossom-bracts
The native as a fruit attracts—
This cot was Amo's chief delight:
And now while yet the day was new,
And scarce the sun had dried the dew,
She and her handmaids sported there.
Quick hand and eye they each and all
Displayed, as, arms and shoulders bare
From side to side they whisked the ball:
Nor is much need our lay declare
How she, the Mistress-Maid, in face
And form superb, and waving grace
Of lithe elastic limb, whene'er
The more erratic ball she tossed
Or caught—or proud with easy air
Regained her balance seeming lost,
Outshone them all beyond compare.

II.

But see! at once the game is stopped,
Each mantle, in its ardour dropped,
Snatched quickly up, at once replaced:
In coy confusion, giggling haste,
Up start the girls of lower grade,
As in his sailor-garb arrayed,
Emerging from a neighbouring patch
Of pinky-tasselled milky maize,
A glimpse of Ranolf's form they catch
And, pausing, he the game surveys.

159

But Amohia calmly rose
With courteous mien and gentle pride;
A moment's blush she could not hide,
Within her eyes a moment's light,
Upon their lids a tremor slight,
Alone lent import to the greeting
She gave to him whose image bright
Had left, since that first forest-meeting
Her busy fancy no repose.

The youth had come prepared to stay
With presents and persuasive speech
Results he feared that luckless day
Might lead to; for the violence shown
By his companions to atone:
The ‘Sounding Sea's’ just ire appease,
And heal if such there were, the breach
Between his former friends and these.
But as they scaled the steep ascent
Up to the village rampart-pent,
With high embankments, ditches wide
And fighting-stages fortified;
And passed the crooked entrance made
Through double post and palisade
With crossing withies braced and tied,
The prudent Amo gave her guest
A hint to let the matter rest;
And then he learnt how she had laid
Injunction on her babbling maid
To hold her peace; and strange to tell
The girl had kept the secret well.

160

III.

With blunt good-humoured haughtiness,
A sturdy, proud and easy air
Of sway unquestioned, frank no less,
Did Tangi-Möana declare
In briefest phrase how glad was he
The stranger at his place to see.
And then, the proffered food declined,
To pipes and parley he resigned
Himself, in sunshine while they basked;
And many things it sorely tasked
The hoary chief, the youthful friend,
To illustrate, or comprehend,
Attentive heard, acutely asked;
About the white man's home and land,
Why Ranolf left it, yet so young;—
The tribes he knew—had dwelt among;
The seaward chiefs and what they planned;
Who were their friends and foes—and most
The guns and powder they could boast,
And all the wealth at their command
From ships that trafficked on the coast.

IV.

Their meeting over, Ranolf strolled
About the flat where gardens gay
Bright in the morning sunbeams lay,
With large-leaved roots and basking fruits
That lolled on beds weedfree and clean
As fairies had the gardeners been.

161

Then with the younger folk, a few
By Amo led, and one or two
Most brisk or curious of the old,
Crossed, paddling slow a large canoe,
The gleaming Lake's unrippled floor
To woody Nongotáha's shore,
To wing the hours of sultrier heat
With converse in a cool retreat.
A hillside hollow—its sun-parched
And slippery grass of golden hue,
Green, like the half-ripe orange, grew
Where feathery locust-trees o'erarched
A little plot, an airy spot
Their yellow-blossomed branches laid
In luxury of emerald shade.

There Ranolf flung him down, at rest,
With that expansion of the breast
Exultant—all that unreprest
Abandonment to glad emotion—
So fair a clime, a life so free,
With health and strength and buoyancy
Of spirit in supreme degree,—
And more than all, and all enhancing,
That blooming Child of wood and wild
With shadowy hair and radiant face,
That glossy glancing thing of grace
With eyes in liquid splendour dancing,
Or calm, as if from some high place
Of bliss above this earthly scene
Her soul looked forth with light serene

162

No time could quench, no sorrow dim,—
Might well excite, excuse in him,
A careless castaway of Ocean.

Before him lay no water, say
A hollow Sky inverted—blue,
With flecks of snowy sunlit flue,
And mountains hung in crystal air
With peaks above and peaks below
Responsive,—every feature fair
Reversed, in that transparent glow
Deep mirrored; every ferny spur,
Each puckered slope, and wrinkle sleek
That creased their glossy forest-fur,
Sure at the water's edge to meet
Its upward-running counterfeit,
Exact as roseate streak for streak
Some opened Venus-shell displays,
Bivalve with answering spots and rays.
Far round were seen, o'er thicket green,
By sandy shore, in darksome glen,
Cloud-jets of steam whose snowy gleam,
But that they moved not, you would deem
The smoke of ambushed riflemen;
But peaceful these, nor passed away
For wind or hot refulgent day.
White, bright, and still, o'er wild and wood,
Like new-alighted Sprites they stood,
Pure in the brilliant breathlessness:
For breathless seemed the earth and sky
Real and reflected; none the less
Because at times there wandered by
Over the sun-bathed greenery

163

A soft air, lifting like a sigh
Some tree-fern's fan, as if in sleep
It stirred in the noon-stillness deep,
Then sank in drowsy trance profound;
That faint distress the only sign
Of life o'er all the glorious sweep
Of verdure streaming down the steep.
So hushed the deep noon-glow around,
So splendour-bathed that vault divine,
The atmosphere so subtle-clear
'Twas rapture but to breathe it!—well
Might these have made more sober, staid,
Or pensive souls a moment fear
To break the soft luxurious spell,
The dreamy charm that wrapt the scene,
With utterance even the most serene.

V.

But Life with too much force and heat
In these young hearts impetuous beat
For Silence; so the livelong day
The stream of converse grave or gay
From springs redundant flowed alway.
Their superstitions, legends, lays,
Could endless disquisitions raise;
And our Adventurer, still inclining,
Though neither sad nor very serious,
To all that bore on Man's mysterious
Links with the Life there's no divining—
Learnt how for them, invisible throngs
Of Spirits roamed all visible Space:
All Nature was a human Face—

164

A Sybil with a thousand tongues
And teachings for their priests to trace,
Excite, evoke with charms and songs:
All Matter was all symbol—fraught
With Love and Hate—with Will and Thought.
Within a Man's own frame—without,
Above, below, and all about,
Nothing beyond his will that stirred,—
His limbs in dreaming, beast or bird,
Insect or thing inanimate,
But 'twas oracular of Fate:
The wild bird's song, the wild dog's bark,
Were mystic omens, bright or dark;
A leaf could wave, a breeze could blow
Intelligence of weal or woe;
Let but the wind creep through your lifted hair,
Some God was present there;
And if a rainbow overspanned
A hostile band,
As it to battle rushed,
Already 'twas as good as crushed.

VI.

And then their legends—once again
Recastings from the ancient mould;
Gods, demigods and heroes old
Of giant bulk and dwarfish brain.
Greek, Gothic, Polynesian—all
Primeval races on a train
Of like ideas, conceptions, fall;
Their supernatural Beings still
Are but themselves in ways and will;

165

And still the Superhuman race
Keeps with the human steady pace;
What Man would be—what Man has been,
Through magnifying medium seen
Still makes his God or Gods that grow
With his Soul's growth—its reflex show
By grand Imagination's glass
Dilated; its best thoughts—the mass
Of noblest feelings that exist—
Projected with expanding rays
Upon Eternity's dim haze,
Like Brocken Shadows on the mist.

And was it not so planned to give
Mankind a fit provocative,
At every stage from birth to age,
The best devised to speed the Soul
Towards Adoration's utmost goal?
To guide his infancy and youth,
Too weak to see the summits fair,
Up an ascending mountain-stair
To highest hidden peaks of Truth?
And so Religion's self endow
With that continuous life and glow
Discovery lends, though painful, slow;
That interest ever fresh and warm
Which Science boasts her greatest charm?
Though slow indeed Religion's rise
Even to a glimpse of purer skies;
Though foul and stagnant if you will
The fens and swamps that clog her still.

166

VII.

But here the legendary lore
The stamp of earliest ages bore;
The stories told were wild and rude,
Insipid mostly, pointless, crude:
The simple guile, the childish wile,
With savage deeds of blood and ire,
And treacheries dull for vengeance dire;
Gods, giants, men, all blood-imbrued.
Uncouth the wondrous feats rehearsed,
With lighter fancies interspersed:
Recounted frankly, best and worst,
Since none were met with sneer or scoff:
—How Maui fished these Isles up first,
And Kupé chipped the islets off.
—How Tinirau—vain Chief! the same
Who broad transparent pools outlaid
Of water, which the mirrors made
Where he his beauteous shape surveyed,
Was yet of giant power to tame
The great Leviathan he kept,
A plaything and a pet, who came,
Obedient from his boundless home;
Through sinking hill and swirling trough
Of Ocean, black through snowy foam,
With ponderous swiftness crashing swept,
Whene'er he summoned him by name;
Or rolling over, at a sign
From him, would smash the level brine
Into great clouds of powdery spray,
With thunder-slaps heard miles away.

167

—How Pitaka would noose and draw
Out of Earth's bowels by main strength,
Out of his mountain-dungeon fell,
Like periwinkle from its shell,
The bulkiest time-worn Taniwha;
Undaunted by his tortuous length
Of notched and scaly back—his jaw
Wide yawning, and obscenest maw
With bones and greenstone trinkets filled,
And weapons of his swallowed prey—
Men, women, children, countless killed
By this, of ancient tale and lay
The wingless dragon—rather say
Iguanodon or Lizard vast,
Some caverned monster left the last
Memento of a world bygone
Earth's grinding changes had o'erthrown,
Downliving with still lessening powers
Into this foreign world of ours.
—Then, too, how Márutúa drew
His dragnets round a hostile crew,
The thousand men he snared and slew—
Beguiled to feast upon the strand
And lend their seeming friend a hand
In some great fishing-bout he planned.
—How Hátu-pátu, as he lay
Couched in a rimu-tree one day,
Still as a tufted parasite,
A mere excrescence, not to fright
The birds that would close by alight,
Nor mark his lithe and bending spear

168

Along the branch more near and near
Creep slowly as a thing that grew,
Until with sudden thrust and true
The noiseless weapon pierced them through—
Himself was quite unconscious too,
As thus he lay like one spell-bound,
What long-curved claws were slowly stealing round
The stem—or cautiously withdrew—
Slowly retracted—then again protruded
Amid the leafy shadows playing
Upon the sunny-chequered trunk,
Noiseless as they and unbetraying
The lank and gaunt Witch-giantess
That wholly hid, behind it slunk;
Until he found himself, the watcher,
Grim-clutched, and not the poor fly-catcher;
Then in her cavern-home secluded
Was kept in cruel-kind duresse
To be as best he might, moreover,
That Patu-paere's pet and lover!

VIII.

And next, fair Amo's handmaid—she
Whose gaze of wondering curious glee
Would Ranolf's gestures—looks—pursue,
So pleasant seemed they, strange and new;
Who, if his lively, joyous glance
Alit upon the little maid,
Would start half-back, as if afraid
And half-disposed to run away,

169

With look averted though so gay,
And face half-hidden, and a play
Of giggling blushes, bright and shy;
Then with brown eyes—that all the day
Would else with mirth and mischief dance,
Keeping a sheltering friend close by,
Would snatch a serious look askance,
As quickly turned aside again
Lest she be caught in that assay;—
All with an artless sympathy,
An interest undisguised and plain—
Such fresh unconscious coquetry!
Though little noticed by the rest
Because with fancies of their own,
Thoughts, feelings hitherto unknown,
Too much amused and prepossest;—
This shy and saucy Miroa told,
With fluttering breath, slight-heaving breast,
Looking at any but the guest
To whom her story was addrest—
How merry Rona, reckless, bold,
Wetting one evening in a stream
The leaves to make her oven steam,
Cursed the fair innocent Moon aloud,
Because she hid behind a cloud,
And Rona, when the light was gone,
Struck her foot against a stone;
And how the solemn Moon in anger came
Broadening and reddening down, and wound
Her bright entangling beams around
The affrighted Maid in vain resisting,
Like a vast Cuttlefish around her twisting
A hundred writhing trunks of chilly flame;

170

Then rose with basket, Maid and all,
And fixed them in her amber ball;
“And this is fact for certain—doubt who will,
Wait only till the moon shall fill
Her horns—there's Rona with her basket still!”

“A pretty fancy, pretty one!”
Said Ranolf when the tale was done;
“Come here, my child—let me repay
Your story,—it will suit your hair
This ribbon, though not half so gay,
So beauteous as the wreath you wear.”
And as the laughing girls beside,
Caught, pushed her forward, held her there,
The ribbon round her head he tied,
For some such purpose brought; while she
A-tremble with delighted pride,
With pettish mock reproaches, aimed
At them, not him, seemed, half-ashamed,
Half-angry, struggling to get free.

171

Canto the Fifth. The Legend of Tawhaki.

1. Amo tells the Legend of Tawhaki (the second chief Hero-God; Maui being the first). Creatures of the slime killed by Light. 2. To Ranolf it typifies Truth destroying superstitious creeds. 3. Hapae, a skyborn winged damsel, loves and leaves Tawhaki. 4. Seeking her he ascends to heaven by a spider-thread. Finds her and becomes a God. 5. Ranolf makes Hapae, Old Philosophy with its Immortal Hope, to be recovered by Science dealing with the sources of the physical. 6. Noblest discoveries psychical. 7. What the myth really indicates.

I.

Then Amohia, tapping Ranolf's arm,
Said, “Listen, Pakeha!”—and with lifted hand,
Rounding—Enchantress-wise
When double soul she throws into a charm—
The solemn archness of her great black eyes,
Deeplighted like a well,
An ancient legend she began to tell
Of one God-hero of the land,
Of which our faithful lay presents
Precisely the main incidents:

172

Adorning freely everywhere
The better its intents to reach,
The language so condensed and bare,
Those clotted rudiments of speech:

“Once a race, the Pona-turi—in the oozy depths of Ocean,
Fierce, uncouth, in gloomy glory, lived where light is none, nor motion.
More than anything created, Light, their bane, their death, they hated;
So for Night they ever waited ere ashore they seal-like clambered
To their house Manáwa-tanë—their great mansion lofty chambered;
Whence, if e'er a windy Moon had caught them, you would see them hieing
Homeward—sable shapes beneath the crisping silver floating, flying,
Swift as scattered clouds on high their snowy courses gaily plying.

“Young Tawháki, well he knew them—did they not his Father mangle?
Hang his fleshless bones, a scarecrow, ghastly from their roof to dangle?
Keep his Mother too, a slave, each day to give them timely warning
Ere dark Sky from Earth uplifting left the first gold gap of morning?

“Vengeance with his Mother then he plotted. So by daylight hiding
In their houseroof-thatch he couched, his slimy foes' arrival biding.

173

Darkness comes; they land in swarms; their spacious House they crowd and cumber;
Revel through the midnight reckless; drop at last in weary slumber.
Like the distant Ocean's roaring sinks and swells the mighty snoring.—
Out then steals Tawháki chuckling; long ere day begins to brighten,
Stops up every chink in doorway, window, that could let the light in:
And the snoring goes on roaring; or if any Sleeper yawning
Turned him restless, thinking, ‘Surely it must now be near the dawning,’
Growling, ‘Slave, is daylight breaking? are you watching, are you waking?’
Still the Mother answered blandly, ‘Fear not, I will give you warning—
Sleep, O sleep, my Pona-turi—there are yet no streaks of morning!’

“So the snoring goes on roaring. Now above the mountains dewy,
High the splendour-God careers it—great Te Ra, the Tama Nui.
Sudden cries Tawháki's Mother, ‘Open doors and windows quickly!
Every stop-gap tear out, clear out! On them pour the sunbeams thickly!’
Through the darksome Mansion—through and through those Sons of Darkness streaming

174

Flash the spear-flights of the Day-God—deadly-silent—golden-gleaming!
Down they go, the Pona-turi! vain their struggles, yells and fury!
Like dead heaps of fishes stranded by the Storm-spray, gaping—staring—
Stiffened,—so, astonished, helpless, lay they in the sunbeams glaring:
Fast as shrink upon the shelly beach, those tide-left discs of jelly;
Fast as leathery fungus-balls in yellow dust-clouds fuming fly off,
So they shrink, they fade, they wither, so those Imps of Darkness die off!—”

II.

“Manáwa-tanë! ‘breath or life
Of Man’—no doubt; a race at strife
With Light!—were this a German tale,
Not artless Maori, who could fail
To hit its sense, extract its pith,
So pregnant, palpable a Myth!”
Thought Ranolf listening. “Darkness breeds
A swarm of superstitious creeds
That crush Man's Spirit till it bleeds;
His Father—God! yes, him they clearly
A terror make, a scarecrow merely,
High up—unmoved—dry bones or worse
To his abandoned Universe.
His Mother, Earth—her wealth—her worth—

175

Her schools—thrones—churches—mind and might—
Enslaved so long, set day and night
To warn and war against the Light,—
Free Thought, the beautiful, the bright!
Whose Sons not seldom from their eyes
Shut out, dissemble and disguise
Its full results—half-veil its rays
(Till they shall gather to a blaze?)
And fondly feign they nurse no seeds
Of death to all those narrow creeds.
Howe'er that be, the Sun will soar!
His foes may slumber, rave, or roar—
Yet Dayspring spreads o'er sea and shore;
And now, even now, for all their din,
The killing Light is streaming in!—
But I attend. Bright-Eyes, proceed;
Your Myth seems one who runs may read!”

“Now, of heavenly birth to cheer him—beauteous from those blue dominions,
Hapae came—divine—a damsel—floating down on steady pinions;
Came, a moving moonbeam, nightly lit with Love his chamber brightly:
Till that Spring-time of her bosom flushed out in a baby-blossom.
Infant, it had infant failings. Once the dirt-delighted bantling,
Scornfully Tawháki jeered at. Straightway all the mother mantling
In her heart, her treasure Hapae caught up; to her plumy vesture
Pressed it nestling; then upspringing with reproachful look and gesture,

176

Sailed off to her skyey mansion, vanished in the blue expansion,
Like an Albatross that slides into the sunset,—whitely fading
With its fixed rare-winking vans, away into the crimson shading.
Only ere she parted, while the lagging Westwind she invited
Flapping her broad wings, a-tiptoe on the mannikin alighted
(Red—its arms on knees akimbo—squat—the gable-apex crowning)
One advice she waved Tawháki, more with grief than anger frowning:
‘If you ever feel the Child and Mother to your heart grow dearer,
Ever wish to follow and to find us, O unkindly sneerer,
And would climb by tree-dropt trailers to the Sky a little nearer,
O remember, leave the loose ones; only take and trust to surely
Such as hung from loftiest treetops, root themselves in earth securely!’

IV.

“Many a moon he mourned—Tawháki. Then he started to discover
Where they grew, those happy creepers, that could help a hapless lover.
Many a moon he roamed—Tawháki. And his heart was sore and weary
When he found himself despondent in a forest grand and dreary;
(Ah! that wildering wildwood—who can tell how dense it was and tangled!)

177

Where in wanton woody ringlets many a rope of trailers dangled.
Rapt, absorbed in her pursuit, a blind old Crone those creepers tended;
Caught at, groped and felt for any that within her reach descended.
He, an ancestress discerning, ere for counsel he implored her,
Touched her eyes, a charm repeating, and to sight at once restored her.
Then they found a creeper rooted, finely for his purpose suited.
Up he went exultingly, bold-hearted, joyous-eyed, firm-footed.
At the treetop, see! a tiny spiderthread upshooting shiny,
Wavering, viewless half, yet ever held aloft by mere endeavour!
With a beating heart, Tawháki, muttering many an incantation—
Wild with hope so high it takes the very hue of desperation,
Clasps the clue so evanescent; then with yearnings deep, incessant,
Seeing in the vault above him only Hapae's eyes that love him,
Up and up, for ever upward mounts he dauntless—nothing scares him,
Up through azure bright Abysses still that thread in triumph bears him!

Suddenly a sunny grove is round him—cheery people working
At a great Canoe, appear. All day he keeps the thicket, lurking,
Till when balmy Shadow veils them and serenest Sleep assails them,

178

Stripping off his youthful glory, out he steals, an old Man hoary;
Strikes a few swift strokes, and magic-like the work is ended
Graceful with its lofty stern, with open-circled fretwork splendid,
Lo! the great Canoe completed! To his copse he then retreated;
On another hollowed trunk next night the wonderwork repeated.

—Those Celestials marvelled greatly; yet reflecting in their pleasure
Such a worker were a treasure as a Slave beyond all measure,
Watched and clutched that Old Man wilful—so decrepit yet so skilful,
And to their great Ruler bore him.—O delight! who sits before him?
'Tis his beautiful benign One, 'tis his downy-plumed divine one,
Hapae! will he now deride her or the subtle Elf beside her!—
Kindly greeted, with caresses he the Child allures and presses
To his heart no more to sever. Then, as he flings off for ever
That disguise's dim defilement, Hapae smiles sweet reconcilement;
Swift, the Child they bathe, baptize it, lustral waters o'er it dashing;
And Tawháki—breast and brow sublime insufferably flashing,
Hid in lightnings, as he looks out from the thunder-cloven portals
Of the sky—stands forth confest—a God and one of the Immortals!”

179

V.

“More myth and deeper”—murmured he
As Amo rose and bid them wait
Her quick return: “But how translate
In German style the mystery?—
Shall Hapae our Urania be?
The ‘meaning not the name’ were she?—
And if Philosophy Divine
Whose radiant features wont to shine
With heavenly splendour, hopes so rare,
To Man's enfranchised Soul resign
Her charms celestial;—if their Child
Hight Science seem at first defiled
With taint its infancy may wear—
Materialism—foul Despair—
Shall he the wondrous birth despise?
Perhaps of those imperial ties
With Reason, free Enlightenment,
That marriage made in heaven, repent—
Until his fair Urania flies
Despondent to her native skies?
No, but from her he cannot sever—
Can ne'er resist the lofty lure
Of those aspiring eyes so pure!
His must she be, to forfeit never,
His hopeful, heavenly One for ever!

But where to seek the Angel flown?—
Can that dark forest overgrown
Be Metaphysics? And the Crone
So watchworn, Kant or Hegel is't?

180

Some mighty Transcendentalist?
Or some serene Sensationist
With both his blinkers on? content,
Nay proud, with his old-fashioned bent
(Anile, perhaps?) to take and teach
Just what his eyes and hands can reach?—
Well! let the climber cling through all
To truths they call ‘phenomenal,’
Well-rooted in the circle small
Of our preceptions; and ne'er doubt,
That, sown and springing from without,
These parasites upon the Tree
Of shadowy-leaved Humanity,
(Like those depending trailers, sprung
From floating seeds sky-dropt and flung
Upon the bark wherefrom they shoot
And reaching Earth take firmer root)—
These, even these, shall point the way,
The outlet find, some happy day,
By triple-plied deductions, say,
Or if by subtler clue it be,
Some thread of fine analogy,
To regions fair and fertile, where
Undimmed by dense refracting Sense,
Far in the Unapparent shine
Truths and assurances divine
Of God and deathless life confest,
Where the sad Wanderer sore distrest
May glad once more upon the breast
Of his regained Urania rest!—

181

VI.

“With yet more truth the legend teems.
Man's heaven's a heaven of Work it seems;
Yet though his matchless Art reduce
The World of Matter to his use;
Carve out that grand design, until
Its primal Force start forth compliant,
His Science-Lamp's good Genie-Giant,
Ardent to help him at his will,
Achieve whate'er that will may dare,
To walk the sea or ride the air;
Nay, though his potent patient skill
Work subtler witcheries, stranger still;
Take weeds and turn their downy fluff
To magic mirrors that retain
Whate'er impress of loveliness
May, flitting by, their surface stain;
Take light, and its fine rays unravel
Till they betray the inmost stuff
The stars are made of whence they travel;
Through continents and Ocean-caves
Whisper a lightning-language; yet
Not this alone his nature craves;
All these a loftier race may set
As tasks and triumphs fit for slaves
Who cannot reach a nobler goal
Nor conquer truths that touch the Soul!

VII.

“All fancy this! invention pure;
That credulous complaisant whim

182

With its foregone conclusions trim
To which no Oracles are dim,
No doting prophecies obscure.
Myths may be construed many ways;
Things take a hundred shapes in haze;
In this world, like as Child and Mother,
Matter and Spirit ape each other,
Into each other shift and run—
(Both, better known, may turn out one)
And type and antitype around
In all things may be feigned or found.
Yet for all this, most true it is,
That savage story strangely rings
With echoes of profoundest things;
Glows with the old celestial yearning;
Nay glimmers with a faint discerning
How nought can stifle or repress
Man's upward tendency—the stress
Towards ampler Being, nothing less
Than high immortal Happiness.”

183

Canto the Sixth. Mythical Cosmogonies.

1. A native Repast. 2. Maori Theogony and Cosmogony. 3. Ranolf jestingly personifies a materialistic God and Creator. 4. How they take it. The ‘Parson-bird.’ Intoning. 5. Love—the intruder. The Magician watching the Lovers.

I.

Then Amohia, who, her story ended,
Had left the group, returned, not unattended.
A sturdy stripling by her side,
Te Manu, to herself by blood allied,
Coal-curled, brown-cheeked, with beardless chin—
Good-humour broadly shining in his wide
Black eyes and teeth white-glistening through a grin—
Came from the beach where the canoe was tied,
And on the ground before the Stranger placed,
That he the first might touch and taste,
In flax-wov'n basket for a dish,
A dainty pile of delicate fish
In native style deliciously steam-drest;
Like whitebait some; some boiled bright red,

184

The small cray-fish in myriads bred,
With sunk fern-bundles lifted from the Lake:
Next, roasted fern-root pounded to a cake,
Milkwhite and floury; and the choicer roots,
The new potato and its substitutes,
The kúmara and táro. Then a store
Of jellies, ruddy-clear as claret, pressed
And well preserved from fruits last season bore,
Rich clusters of tupaki, luscious sweet;
With water mixed their noontide thirst to slake,
An innocent beverage truly! Rude the light
Repast, and simply wholesome at the best;
Yet scrupulously clean withal, it might
Have satisfied a more fastidious guest.

II.

And when the talk began again,
Said Ranolf, “How do you explain,
You Maori, how the heavens were hung
Up there? who spread the azure main?
Whence Man and all things living sprung?”

Prompt was an ancient Dame's reply,
Of wrinkled cheek yet lively eye,
Who took the pipe from her blue lips
And sate in grizzled dignity,
Proud of her crest that towered so high
Of hoopoe-feathers, black with snowy tips;—
Prompt was that ancient Dame's reply—
Compact her scheme of rude Cosmogony:

185

“There was Night at the first—the great Darkness. Then Pahpa, the Earth, ever genial, general Mother,
And our Father, fair Rangi—the Sky—in commixture unbounded confusedly clave to each other:
And between them close cramped lay their children gigantic—all Gods. He the mightiest, eldest, the Moulder
And Maker of Man—whose delight is in heroes—Tumatau—the Courage-inspirer, the Battle-upholder;
Tangaroa, far-foaming, the Sire of the myriads that silvery cleave the cerulean waters;
And the solemn and beauteous Tanë, who gathers his stateliest, green-ever, trees-waving daughters
Into forests, the sunny, the songster-bethridden; then Rongo—the peaceful, the kindly provider
Of the roots that with culture are milkiest, pithiest; he too, who flings them in wilder and wider
Profusion uncultured nor needing it—Haumia; lastly, the fiercest of any, the Rider
Of Tempests—Tawhiri, joy-wild when his sons—when the Winds multitudinous rush with the rattle
Of hail and the sting of sharp showers and the hurry of turbulent clouds to aerial battle.
All these did the weight of vast Rangi o'erwhelm; there restlessly, rampantly, brother on brother
Lay writhing and wrestling in vain to get free from the infinite coil and confusion and smother;
Till the forest-God, Tanë, with one mighty wrench irresistible prized his great parents asunder—
With his knotty and numberless talons held down—held the Earth and its mountain magnificence under,
Heaved the Heavens aloft with a million broad limbs shot on high, all together rebounding, resilient:

186

Then at once came the Light interfused, interflowing,—serenely soft-eddying—crystalline—brilliant!—
Now the Sons all remained with the Earth but Tawhiri; he, sole, in tempestuous resentment receding
Swept away at the skirts of his Father—the Sky; but swiftly to vengeance and victory leading
His livid battalions, returned in his terrors, his kindred with torment and torture to harry:
Tangaroa rolled howling before him—even Tanë bowed down; could his blast-besplit progeny parry
His blows, or withstand the full pelt of his torrents that flung them o'er wastes of white Ocean to welter?
Could Rongo do more ere he fled than conceal in the warmth of Earth's bosom his children for shelter?—
No! they shrank from the Storm-God amazed and affrighted. One brother—Tumatau—alone durst abide him,
Tumatau and Man stood before him unswerving, deserted by all, disregarded, defied him!
But Man that defection still punishes daily; with snare, net and spear still their offspring he chases,
Tangaroa's and Tanë's—the feathered—the finny; still turns up and tears from her tender embraces
All that Rongo has laid in the lap of his Mother; while fiercely Tawhiri still plagues all their races—
Ever wreaks his wild anger on blue Tangaroa, and whirls into spray-wreaths the billows he lashes—
On the Earth whose rich berries and blossoms he scatters and scathes; on the forests he splinters and crashes;
And on Man who stands firm when his thunder is loudest and laughs when his lightning incessantly flashes!”

187

III.

Said Amohia, “In your heart you laugh;
You think all this is nonsense, to-e, ‘chaff;’
Nay then, O Stranger, answer in your turn,
For still, you see, the Sun
Has wellnigh half his course to run,
Of his beginning—of the birth
Of all things, Sea and Sky and Earth,
What from their Sages do the white men learn?”

Silent he scanned an instant's space
The open eyes, the candid face
Of the inquiring earnest Maid;
Then as a half-satiric smile
Twitched at the corners of his mouth, the while
Lurked in his eyes a sly malicious twinkle,
Rushed off into a wild tirade—
Not caring if his words were clear or dim,
Only obedient to the moment's whim,
Somewhat like this: for we must sprinkle
With thoughts and phrases freer and more flowery,
The ruder baldness of his simple Maori;
Or rather, quote in full the jesting rhyme
Remembered from that Student-time,
Of which some outlines he employed—
With many explanations too
'Mid interruptions not a few—
To give to her whose wonder he enjoyed,
Some notion of a World-creator new,

188

Or virtual Deity, which to content us—
Your orthodox Materialists—a breed
Large-swallowed for a subternatural creed—
Have (or in reason might as well have) lent us:

“There's a God they call Motion; a wonderful Being,
Omnipresent, omnipotent! thinking and seeing,
All life, birth, existences, creatures, conditions,
Of his versatile skill ever-new exhibitions,
Are but phases his phantasy, subtle or simple,
Condescends to assume; from the faintest first dimple
He indents in the vapour that veils him—beginning
As he slides to a pirouette graceful and winning,
Such a whirl of Creation, such Universe-spinning,—
To his last of developments dense or ethereal,
When as Consciousness crowned with a halo imperial,
Though but grovelling in granules and cells ganglionic
In the brain of Mankind sits the grand Histrionic!
'Tis the strangest and stoutest of creeds and convictions—
'Tis a God that defies and disdains contradictions:
His adorers, though puzzled perhaps to say whether
He is they, or they he, they are mixed so together;—
(Though himself best proclaims his own glory Protean,
When as lightning he dances with worship Judæan,
Or intones as deep thunder his own Io-Pæan)
His adorers as Deity scorn to avow him,
Yet with faculties really divinest endow him!
All the powers creative they scornfully ravish
From the old-fashioned God of the million they lavish
On this Phantom with faith unsuspecting and slavish!
Then—like virgins once flung to that Sea-dragon scaly,

189

At the shrine of their Pagod they immolate gaily
Aspirations Humanity feeds upon daily;
There consume, with serene suicidal devotion
Whole heart-loads of lofty and tender emotion,
All the foredawn of gold over Life's darksome Ocean.
And they vary his victims with Logic—no little;
Never spare Common Sense—not a fraction—nor tittle;
Show no mercy for Sciences moral or mental;
And for Metaphysicians—the tribe transcendental,
Would burn them to cinders—a holocaust; striving
On the ashes to keep their Divinity thriving.
For strange though it seem, this Almighty Mechanic,
Undesigning Designer of all things organic,
Comes from nowhere himself: his own Father and Mother—
Never caused though all-causing—derived from no other;
And arranges, combines for such orderly courses
His myriad myriads of multiform forces
By accident only—repulsion—attraction—
Into beautiful symmetry, uniform action;
By headlong unweeting haphazard produces
Profound adaptations to infinite uses;
And as helplessly, stolidly stumbles on wonders,
With as little intention, as others on blunders;
Deaf and dumb, and stone blind, can make eyes, ears and voices,
Till with Beauty—Light—Music—all Nature rejoices;
Nay, unconscious beforehand arrives in due season
By dint of mere going, at Thought, Sense and Reason;
With no Mind, makes all Mind—that fine consummation,
That can trace the back steps of the blind operation;
Aye can soar on the wings of sublime calculation
O'er the flaming far ramparts of star-filled Creation.
So this Fetish—this Stock-God, this Impulse unguided,

190

With no aim and no sense, yet success so decided,
Still manipulates Atoms by no one provided
Into Minds like vast Mountains a World overviewing;—
With no better notion of what he is doing,
Hits off Shakspeares and Newtons and Cæsars and Platos—
Than the logs on the ashes which roast your potatoes:
And the men who consider this creed satisfactory
And would smile with mild pity on Sceptics refractory,
Poor crawlers who crowd to a house with a steeple,—
Are—some of the wisest and best of our people.”

IV.

To this effusion nought replied
The listeners; only said aside,
“The Stranger mocks us;” quietly—
Too courteous for expressed dissent,
Too proud to show astonishment
Or ignorance of their Guest's intent.
That laughing lunch-purveyor, he
Only to Miroa muttered low:
“A tito this—a fib, I know;
'Tis nothing like what Mapou says
Of their white Átua and his ways;
And he can tell, who visits most
And learns all news that reach the coast.
This Stranger too,”—and here the grin
Grew broader,—“by his dress at least
Is not a Tohunga, a Priest;
For Mapou says, they always go
In shining black from top to toe,
With two white plumes beneath their chin,

191

Just like that Tu-i, Mapou thought.”
And Ranolf smiled, whose quick ear caught
The fancy, as he saw just then
The bird they spoke of, down the glen
Come dashing, with its glossy coat
Like jet-black satin shot with green
And blue reflexions—at its throat
Two dainty-pencilled plumes of snow;
And once again admired, as oft
Before, its lively ways and mien;
As flitting, shifting to and fro
It ransacked every kowhai-tree
In yellow bloom, and loudly coughed
And loudly whistled in its glee,
And turned quite over, bending low
Its busy head to reach and dip
Into the pendent flowers and sip
Their juice, in fluttering glad unrest,
Unceasing in its honey-quest.

“That may be true,” said Miroa, “too;
For 'tis averred they are like a bird
In this (although it seems a joke)
They cannot speak like other folk,
But always sing what they would say,
E'en when they to their Átua pray.”
—But here that feather-crested Dame
Who this light chatter overheard
Rebuked them—feeling it became
Her sage experience to repress
Such sallies of mere sauciness:

192

“Oh foolish you! we always do
Ourselves in all our prayers the same!
Do we not sing for all we want?
May they not know some potent chaunt
To charm their Átua from his haunt,
As we coax eels to leave the mud?”—
Such reasoning they could not gainsay,
It nipped their satire in the bud.

V.

Meanwhile, another Guest had been
Among them though unnoticed and unseen;
Joining their converse with no audible tongue,
And speaking mystic Music without sound;
On whose mute melodies the listener hung;
Whose viewless Presence brightened all around.
Who should it be but that Consoler dear,
Heartwhispering Paraclete of priceless cheer—
Who but the Enchanter—Love? whose witchery flings
Fresh life round Daybreak's life-enlivening springs;
Heaps Noon on Noon for fervour; double-dyes
For deeper pathos Eve's empurpled skies.
Did he not use his artless Art that day
With slightest means most meaning to convey?
Some idle question asked as if in sport,
Some falter in the tone or breath drawn short—
Some touch of tapering fingers—touch so fleet,
They seem, just seem, as they a moment meet,
To linger ere they leave the contact sweet?
Or scorning all less subtle ministries
Did He not speak through Amohia's eyes,
Whose lids and raven lashes though they fell

193

Dark as a closing bird's-wing o'er their light
Upon her rich warm cheek, could never quite
Shut-in their lustrous tenderness, nor quell
Their rebel glances eloquent of Him,
More than the mother-bird can fold with hers
Her crowd of small quick-running loiterers
So closely, safely, that no single one
Of all the nestling, jostling train
May slip a moment out into the sun,
Although next moment gathered in again;
Whene'er that brooding mother sees
The stiff-stretched hawk across the blue vault swim;
As once or twice amid the trees
Had Amohia marked the Priest appear,
(Though vanishing almost as soon as seen)
With eyes inscrutable and dim
Watching herself and Ranolf; though with mien
Not threatening now, malignant nor severe,
Whatever cause she had to fear.

—But who could tell what hatred fell,
What dark designs might not be found
Within his heart whose face no less
Was such a smooth and placid screen?—
How many a man amid the press,
Is but a walking Wilderness,—
Like some fierce Ameer's hunting-ground
By lofty walls concealed, confined:
Caverns interminable wind,
Abysses yawn, those walls behind;

194

There wild beasts prowl and moan and howl
Of lust and greed and all excess;
They peer and pry who wander by—
The smooth fair walls are all they spy.

But little of his looks recked they,
Which though they keenly glanced their way
Did yet no ill intent betray.
So from redundant springs all day
Flowed streams of converse, grave and gay.

195

Canto the Seventh. The Captive.

1. Ranolf seized. 2. Where imprisoned. 3. Prospect of death. 4. A midnight visitor. 5. Plot against him explained. 6. The first Kiss. 7. The parting. Amo's despairing song. 8. Nature helps Love.

I.

O'er all the East the sunset's flush
From plain to peak began to rise;
That slowly-fading fever flush
Of beauteous Day before she dies.
The friends again had reached the Isle
And for a little space had parted;
Those elder women kindly-hearted
About the evening meal employed:
Their guest had strolled away awhile,
And by the Lake the painted eve enjoyed;
There, tempted after all the sweltering heat
By the cool water glistening black
In shade behind a green spur's shelving back,
Which seemed a place for bathing meet,
Had passed some wooded rocks upon his right

196

Into a thicket where karakas veiled
The path in gloom almost as dark as night—
When from behind he felt himself assailed
By ambushed men unseen, unknown;
Before he could resist was overpowered;
A mantle o'er his head was thrown,
His arms and feet fast pinioned; nor availed
His stifled shouts, the threats and taunts he showered
Upon his dastard foes, who answered nought
But with determined silence and one will
Their struggling captive rapidly conveyed
O'er rocks and rooty paths (he thought)
Where branches oft their way opposed
Into some place from outer air enclosed;
For cooler seemed and yet more still
The atmosphere; and on his sense the smell
Of the dried rushes used in buildings fell.
There on the ground the luckless youth they laid;
And when a sliding panel was made fast
With cautious footsteps out of hearing passed.

II.

Now left alone, the youth contrived to free
His head, and strove his prison-place to see.
All round was sombre darkness; but it teemed
With great white ghastly eyes that strangely gleamed
With pink and silvery flashings here and there,
And seemed to float and throb in the dun air;
Then by degrees grew motionless, and fixed
On him one savage and concentred gaze;

197

And slowly he discerns, those eyes betwixt,
Features gigantic—furious—in amaze;
Wild brows upbranching broad, yet corrugate
With close-knit frowns ferocious; blubber lips
Stretched wide as rage and mockery can strain
Mouths—monstrous as the Shark's when 'mid the ship's
Exultant crew he gnashes in dumb pain—
That grin grotesque, intense and horrible hate,
And thrust out sidelong tongues that from their root
The very frenzy of defiance shoot.
So, with malignant and astonished stare
They gaze, as if the intruder's blood to freeze.

At length, accustomed to the gloom, he sees
What dwarfish forms those ponderous heads upbear;
Their crooked tortoise-legs, club-curved and short;
Their hands, like toasting-forks or tridents prest
Against each broad and circle-fretted breast;
And all the fact discerned at last, he knows
These pigmy-giants form red-ochred rows
Of rafters and pilasters to support
A spacious hall;—some carved in high relief;
While others standing from the walls aloof
Piled up in pillars of squat monsters rise
Perched on each others' shoulders to the roof.
The tribe's great Council-Chamber this should be,
Their Wháre-kúra, Hall of sacred Red,
For worship—justice; where the most adept,
The glorious deeds of their ancestral dead,
And pedigrees that back for centuries crept,
Safe in their memories by rehearsal kept.
Those forms were effigies (he might surmise)
Each of some famous ancestress or chief;

198

But to his fancy now the crowd appeared
A Gorgon-eyed and grinning demonry
Whose fiendish rancour his misfortune jeered.

III.

And bitter were his feelings as he lay
To dark forebodings, anxious fears a prey:
What could have caused this outrage? whose the deed?
Or what its object? in his utmost need
Where could he look for succour? how escape
The doom that threatened him in some dread shape
He scarce could doubt, although the thought might strike
His cooler mind, so unprovoked a wrong
Done by these islanders, was little like
(As all his past experience would attest)
Their usual treatment of a peaceful guest.
And though the tide of his regrets ran strong
With self-reproaches that a careless hour
Had placed his life within their savage power,
Mokoia's Chief he felt could never be
Privy to such a wrong!—The ‘Sounding Sea’
Had spurned such crafty craven treachery.
His natural spirits at the thought revived;
And he resolved forthwith to be prepared
The moment that his unknown foes arrived
And loosed his bonds, to spring upon them—dash
Between then—struggle—lose no slightest chance
But do and dare whatever might be dared
Or done, however desperate, wild and rash,
That might accomplish his deliverance.
Or if no opening should occur for swift
Decisive force or dexterous agile shift,

199

He still would try what gentle means might do,—
Never despair! in worst extremes he knew
So many chances to the brave accrue,
Hopes to the true heart come so often true!

But should all fail, and he be doomed to die,
Ah, could he help but feel—no soul so dull
As not to feel—how deep the misery—
The bitterness to leave a world so full
Of vivid beauty, varied life and joy,
'Twould scarce the wisest even in ages cloy!
Yet even then he had the heart to rest
In trust his great All-giver would invest—
Out of the infinite exhaustless store
Of Life he loves with lavish hand to pour
Thick as a mist of dew-drops over all
The inconceivable array of star-worlds more
In number than the sands on ocean's shore—
His soul with new existence; though to dust
This apparition of mere clay should fall,
Its present phantasm. “What!” so ran the train
Of thoughts that darkling hurried through his brain
Like caverned ocean-tides—“‘Is man more just
Than God?’ that immemorial chime
Asked out of Arab wastes in earliest time;
And why not ask, Is he more generous, too?
Should not God's great beneficence outdo
What Man could in conception and in will
Be equal to? should He not spare
Another life—a hundred if need were,
To beings into whom his loving care
Did such deep longing for the boon instil?”—
Yes, he would trust in this his extreme need

200

The Infinite; who if infinite indeed
In aught, is infinite in Love as well
That must our own heart's highest love excel.
So with firm patience he resolves to wait,
Whatever be its form, his coming fate.

IV.

Two hours or more had dragged their weary way
While cramped with chafing bonds in pain he lay.
Those stony eyes had faded from his sight
When deeper fell the shades of growing night.
Far, far away his mournful thoughts had flown
To friends and scenes in happy boyhood known;
When—hist! a rustling sound that softly falls
Upon his ear, his wandering mind recalls;
He listens—all is silent—then again
The rustle and slight creak are heard—'tis plain
Some cautious hand has thrust aside the door—
Some noiseless foot steals light along the floor.
The form that owned them had a moment hid
The patch of moonlight where the panel slid
Away—too briefly for his eye to trace
Its outline—guess its purpose; to his side,
So stealthy, swift and noiseless was its pace,
The shadowy Shape seemed less to walk than glide.
Could this some midnight murderer be? his heart
Beat quick as over him that Shadow bent—
Quick as the sweet breath felt upon his face,
That Phantom's breath, that quickly came and went
As if in his emotion it took part.
A soft voice whispered: “Stranger—hist! no word—

201

'Tis I—'tis Amohia!”—Then she fell
To her kind work, and every cutting cord
Sought out and severed with a sharpened shell.
Upsprung the youth, to life and joy restored;
And rapturous thanks had to the Maid outpoured,
But that her hand upon his lips was laid,
But that her lips in briefest whisper prayed
What her unseen more eloquent looks implored:
“O for your life no sound! but follow me—
Who knows how near your deadliest foe may be!”

V.

So through the doorway stealing in the dark,
She makes the panel fast, and he may mark
Less-pleased, that silvery blue solemnity
That mingles with the bowery trees hard by.
Then in the open, silently they creep,
They, and their shadows thrown so sharp and deep.
Upon a terrace half way up a cleft
Or hollow on the mountain's northern steep,
'Mid tufts of flax, tall-bladed, bright as glass,
And ferny tree-clumps, stood the house they left.
See! by a hut which they perforce must pass,
Across their very path, three youths, asleep
In the warm moon upon the sun-dried grass
Are lying!—'twould be ruin to retreat:—
The Maiden's heart, he almost hears it beat!
Each foot placed firm before the last is raised,
They step between the knees so nearly grazed:
And soon are safe beneath the blessed shade
By trees—themselves as still as shadows, made.

202

Then round the island's end, that fear allayed,
Beneath its woody western slopes they steal,
Where they may speak secure, and she reveal,
The cause and author of the base assault
Her friend had suffered. Kangapo's the fault—
That priest's, and not her father's, she averred:
For Kangapo's sole aim, he might have heard,
The one great passion that his bosom stirred,
The main pursuit in which his life was spent,
Was, next his own, their tribe's aggrandizement.
For this, by his advice, almost from birth,
Herself had been made ‘tapu’ to her grief,
To Taupo's Lord—an old whiteheaded chief,
Of mighty power, no doubt, high rank and worth;
And though this marriage of her dread and hate
That landslip had relieved her from of late,
Yet much she feared—the Priest already planned
Some other proud disposal of her hand;
So jealously he watched, so little brooked
The slightest glance of any youth who looked
With any (here she checked herself)—at least
Of any one who talked with her awhile.
And so that day when she observed the Priest
Eye them so keenly with his crafty smile,
Although deceived a moment by his guile,
It roused suspicions, strengthened when she saw
Again, on their returning to the Isle,
He noticed Ranolf from the group withdraw
At sunset; and himself stole off so soon
By the same pathway towards the western wood;
She followed; for the thing could bode no good;
But by another track; had seen him meet
Four men to whom his slightest wish was law,

203

Then to a copse of mánuka retreat
Where they could safely, secretly commune;
Had crept close-up on tiptoe—overheard
Their vile atrocious project every word;
To seize, bind, bear the Stranger to their great
Runanga-house; there leave him bound and wait
The setting of the Moon, till they could take
Their captive to the middle of the Lake,
Where they would throw him overboard, still bound;
And tell her Father next day how they found
The Stranger at his evening meal—with food—
Aye, food! beside the monument that stood
High carved in their most sacred burial-ground
O'er his most famous ancestor's dead bones:
And though a bird sung on it all the while—
Doubtless the spirit of that Chief renowned,
It still could not prevent the outrage vile:—
Would not such impious sacrilege astound
The boldest?—how aloof the crime they viewed
With hair on end, tongues to their palates glued
In speechless horror, motionless as stones:
But how his Ancestor's insulted Shade
With vengeance dire the deed profane repaid;
For when the Stranger launched his boat again
There was no ripple on the watery plain;
Yet scarce a spear-flight had he left the bank
Before his boat without a breeze capsized,
And with it—he with scarce a struggle—sank;
For all his powers that Spirit had paralyzed.
This was the plot concerted then and there;
And next she noted where his boat they hid

204

To make all points of their narration square;
And Miroa was to bring it, as she bid,
Round to a spot they presently would reach,—
Yes! there she saw them waiting on the beach!
The rest he knew. “But now, O Stranger, haste!
Fly to your skiff—O not a moment waste
In words—already, see! the Moon is low—
Away, before your flight those traitors know!”

He turned to thank her—would not take her nay;
Despite her struggles clasped her to his breast,
And ere from his embrace she broke away
Upon her lips a shower of fervent kisses prest.

VI.

O in all climes and every age a token
Of one bright link for suffering mortals left
With the Eternal and Divine unbroken—
By all Earth's strain and tears untarnished and unreft!—
O tempting—time-worn—ever-during theme—
That first fond kiss of Love! first dazzling gleam
When two surcharged electric Love-clouds meet—
Flash Paradise into the mutual dream
Of rapt twin-spirits in a lightning-stream,
And blend in blissful rest their soul-entrancing heat!—
Most surely is the Heav'n-glimpse visible there,
When some young creature, innocent as fair,
Supreme Civilization's tender heir,
Such first faint utterance of true love may dare.
The wondrous, pure, envelopment divine
Of fearful awe and maiden scruples fine—

205

That trembling kiss has broken through it now,
Like the first crocus peeping through the snow.
Oh timid touching of a terrible joy
Whose sweet excess would almost ask alloy!
First hesitating step within the range
Of unimagined worlds—enchanted—strange!—
Ah! break off there, young throbbing hearts! Ah stay,
Let that ecstatic dawn ne'er darken into day!
The quivering brilliance of that hour so tender,
Love's disc emerging o'er the horizon's rim,
Does not its molten palpitating splendour
Leave vulgar Noon and its refulgence dim?
Oh might that Morn its freshness ne'er surrender,
But still in blinding innocency swim!—
Vain thought!—save one such bud of bliss, unblown—
And laws that rule the Universe were gone!

But now, the kisses prest with youthful passion
On Amohia's lips were not alone
The first those lips from one she loved had known,
They were the first she ever felt at all!
A novel mode—a strange too fervent fashion,
Of salutation or caressing this!
What aid, what safeguard to her side to call,
This subtle soft assailant to repel,
This cunning and insidious foe—a kiss!
Was it not thrice too thrilling? might not well
This meeting of the lips and breath appear,
Spirit to spirit—soul to soul to bring
Too dangerously close—too fondly near?
Through joining lips heart seemed to heart to cling;
And had not breath and spirit but one name—
In hers, as many a rougher tongue, the same?—

206

But she has torn herself away—“Oh go,
Ranoro, only go! haste—haste, or they
Will track us here!” She could,—she would not say
For fear more than those choking words, although
Such briefest farewell seemed a knell of woe.
“Farewell, then, dearest! till we meet once more!”
He said, and pushed off quickly from the shore.

VII.

She gazed unmoving—watched his boat depart,
With desolation dragging at her heart.
Just then the ill-omened Moon withdrew behind
A sable cloud-stripe, sudden, as if dropped—
Dead Nun! into a coffin snowy-lined.
Then swelled her heart with tears her pride had stopped;
Weeping she stole the silent trees among,
Weeping reproved her weeping with a song;
For the spontaneous song her sadness moaned,
Provoked the very weakness it disowned;
Racking her bosom with its feigned relief,
And bitter comfort that redoubled grief.

1

“Leave me! yes, too dear one, leave me!
Better now, when least 'twill grieve me!
While unrisen, unconsuming,
Love's red dawn is but illuming
With faint rays our spirits glooming—
Oh while we can bear to sever,
Let us part and part for ever!

207

Part with wishes—vows unspoken,
Tears unshed and hearts unbroken!

2

“O this feeling! who shall cure it—
Teach the Maiden to endure it?—
Where is he, whitebearded, holy,
Who shall lead his daughter slowly
To the waters melancholy?
Lead his love-afflicted daughter
To the still, estranging water?—
Where the pool so gloomy-shining,
Can relieve this love-repining?

3

“She has let it charm too dearly,
Lull too fondly, touch too nearly,
That sweet sorrow; now unwilling,
In the wave so soothing, chilling,
Pure, translucent, passion-killing,
He must lave her—chaunting faintly
Hymns so piteous, hymns so saintly!
Then shall cease this yearning—sighing,
With the mystic measure dying.”

VIII.

So parted they—and so they strove apart
Each to repress the risings of the heart;
Each to rake out, ungerminant, ungrown,
The seed in fertile soil too richly sown.
Yet in her own despite, it seemed, the Maid,

208

Was still recalled to something done or said
By or about the Stranger; to her breast
Tidings of him like wild birds to their nest
Would fly it seemed as to their natural rest;
The slightest news that floated in the air
By some attraction seemed to settle there;
Nor ever seemed there lack of such, or dearth
Of Fancy's food; for desert wastes of Earth
Blush nectared fruits, and the blue void above
Rains mystic manna but to nourish Love!

209

BOOK THE THIRD. ALL IN A SUMMER NIGHT.

211

Canto the First. Miroa's Tidings.

1. Amo watching Ranolf's boat. Her song. 2. Indoors weaving; sings again. 3. The ‘Grasshopper a burden.’ 4. Evening; news of another proposed alliance for her. 5. Her revulsion of feeling. 6. Earthquake. 7. A resolve (8) acted upon.

I.

True Love is like a polype cut in twain,
And doubled life will from division gain.

Fond Amohia could not in her pain
Of stifled passion, though she strove, refrain
From stealing sometimes to a lonely spot
Where all before her lay the Lake serene,
And she could see the glimmer of the cot
Her heart divined was Ranolf's: there with mien
Expectant on the mountain-side unseen
In thick red-dusted fern would couch until
From the dim baseline of the opposite hill
A white speck disengaged itself and grew
Into a sail; or sometimes,—for to while
The time when sport was slack or weather bad,
With help from native hands, our sailor-lad
Had fitted up a light canoe

212

With keel, mast, sails, and rudder, too,
And sculls in European style,—
Sometimes a dark spot she descried
With flashing twinkle on each side
That neared and neared till clear in view
The light skiff, in a mode so new,
Its single occupant though backward going
At once with two long paddles rowing,
Came skimming the blue calm, and still
With sharp keel seemed to slit the thin
Glazed surface of the shining Lake
That shrank apart in widening wake
As shrinks beneath the sacrificial knife
Some forest victim's opening skin
Discoated of its fur and warm
From the last pants of its wild woodland life.
There as she sat alone and long,
Like one who murmurs low some potent charm,
In fervid words her love would simmer into song:

1

“Now should He come, whose coming for a while
Will make all Nature smile.
O bless my longing sight,
Dear one! whose presence bright
I hail with more delight,
Than birds the sunrise thrilling through each rapture-ringing cover,
Than trees the spring-time when they glow with gladder green all over!

213

The Sun is dim without thee, dearest,
Joy's self looks sad till thou appearest!—
See, he comes!—O dull, dull Lake!
How canst thou sleep so blue—nor wake—
Nor rise and wreathe with loving spray my own, my darling lover!

2

“O slim white Sail, whose every curve of grace
So fondly now I trace,
Each silver shape you try
Only to charm his eye
Ah, happy Sail! and fly,
Because you know, howe'er you strain, he still is with you steering—
Nay! but you only feel, slight Sail, the faint wind's fickle veering:—
O envied Wind! that hampered never
Might fondly fold my Love for ever
Wholly in one airy kiss;
Yet coldly can renounce such bliss,
And on your disenchanted way go heartlessly careering!

3

“You vapoury columns that from hotsprings rise
(As from my heart such sighs)
So white against the green,
And through the day serene,
Now this, now that way lean,
And easier postures seem to take for silent contemplation,
O why not always turn towards him in speechless admiration!

214

But you, dark Clouds! that grate with thunder
While on the leaden gloss thereunder,
Silvery rings the fishes make
Are glistening, fading on the Lake—
Flash, murky Clouds, O flash elsewhere, your muttered indignation!

4

“O Sail, O Bark, O happy Wind, O Lake,—
All happy for his sake,
Why cannot I too rest
Indifferent, unopprest,
No aching at the breast—
Why not behold a beauteous thing with heedless airy pleasure,
Sleep, sport or speed away like you, untortured by the treasure!—
But I must moan and writhe and languish,
And almost envy in this anguish
The poor fishes, for they die,
But close to him—beneath his eye:—
And death with him to life without, O who its bliss could measure!”

II.

So on the hill would musically moan
The love-sick Maid; but in the house alone
Her songs would take a deeper, sadder tone:—

215

“Tears, tears!—Oh do not trickle down,
Oh sleep within your fount unknown!
Oh rack my heart but rise not, lest
Cold eyes discern you, and divine the rest.

“Oh for some cavern unespied
Whereto I may escape and hide!
Lest my deep love, in my despite
Leap up, and break away into the light!—”

Such was the burden of an ancient lay
Half to herself she murmured as she sat
Apart from her companions one bright day
Making a broidered border for a mat.
From sloping roof to earthen floor
Two staffs were fixed the Maid before;
Upon a line between them strung
Fringe-like the flax-warp loosely hung;
She worked the woof in thread by thread;
Inserting deftly, plaiting, tying
Into the web as on it sped
More coloured threads beside her lying:
Her task without a model plying,
She wove with interchange ornate
Of spaces crimson black and yellow—
Triangular or tesselate,
Responding each one to its fellow—
The silky fibres intricate:

216

Like some Pompeian pavement's old
Mosaic, rich with contrast bold
Of vivid colours, tasteful, true,
The fair design her fancy drew
Beneath her nimble fingers grew.
But ever and anon she stopped,
A thread was tangled, missed, or dropped;—
What but some ill-concealed distress
Could mar such manifest address
With quite unwonted awkwardness?
How could she speed her at her task so trim,
With thoughts so wandering and with eyes so dim?

III.

Then in this fever of despondence, finding
Her restlessness she could no more restrain,
Struggling her mien and movements to compose,
Though scarcely able to refrain
From rushing—out into the air she goes.
She steps into the noon-glare hot and blinding;
But what a gush of gladsome sound
At once assails her!—like the winding
Of tiny watches numberless, all round
Unceasing streams the loud-vibrating hiss
Of gay cicadas in their summer bliss.
O it tormented her—it pained
Her soul, that emulous shrill monotony
Of exultation so persistent and sustained.—
She turns to where the Lake, a mimic sea,

217

The pebbled beach with pleasant murmur laves;
Hastily she hurries onward now,
Now rests as wearily—wearily watching how
Distorted by the heaving crystal, the bright stones
And tremulous streaks between them clear,
Still float up, vanish, reappear
With endless iteration as the little waves
Keep rolling—rolling in. O then she moans
In very impotence to bear
The placid, playful happiness,
The obstinate calm contentment they express
As if in mockery of her despair.
She flings herself upon the grass
With passionate floods of tears:—Alas,
But who can weep away a woe?
Tears for each flood are readier to reflow;
Or if with the worn frame at length
Exhausted, still revive with its reviving strength.

IV.

Now the long splendours of the day were past;
The gorgeous tints of Eve subsiding fast;
The Western hill-tops touched with solemn rays;
Their slopes in chestnut-hued and chocolate haze
Thin-veiled, that melted downwards into gloom
Blue as the ripened plum's white-misted bloom:
While the reflected roseate richness steeping
The East, slunk fading up from lake and shore,
From mountains next, and last the sky, before
The purple gray of shadow upward creeping;
All the flushed sunset sobered into boding awe;—

218

When Miroa, coursing quick from side to side,
Tossing to any one she saw
A merry word her aim to hide,—
With careful show of carelessness—
Her anxious flutter anxious to repress—
Her object to seem objectless—
Came like a quivering flittermouse,
Came darting through the gathering dusk to Amohia's house.

Bursting with news she longs yet fears to tell,
The darkling room she first examines well,
Lest any listener be lurking near;
Then whispers in that Maiden's ear,
How all day 'twixt her father and the priest
The close and covert converse ne'er had ceased;
Till they determined there should be despatched
An embassy to Nápuhi's famous Chief
With offer to bestow her—Amo's hand
Upon his son Pomáre: how, in brief,
She for young Kárepa had watched,
Who to the mission was attached,
Waylaid him on the road and wormed
His secret from him—as she well knew how;—
He teased her with his love so often now!
But had not Kangapo with truth affirmed,
No match more advantageous could be planned
For her—none give her Sire such right to stand,
With unconstrained and equal brow
Proudly amid the proudest of the land?—
This was a marriage,—must she not confess
The priests would all conspire to bless;

219

Aye, raise to frenzy-pitch their rival tune
Of incantations to the Sun, the Moon,
The winds, and all the powers of Earth and Air,
To be propitious to the bridal pair?

V.

Shocked—terrified—the Maiden heard
The tale with obvious truth averred;
She flushed and paled; her blood suspended,
All life seemed fading from her brain;
Then the hot current spirit-stirred,
Back from her strong heart rushed again,
And high she rose above her pain.
Her doubts, her hesitation ended,
This—this—she felt had sealed her doom:
O dread! to-morrow well she knew
Once more she might be made taboo:
And what could break that hideous chain!
The threatened fate she could evade
Only by flight—swift—secret—undelayed!
All the sheet-lightning that had played
In pointless passion round her soul so long,
Condensed by this compulsion strong,
Shot into arrowy purpose, clear against its gloom.

VI.

As through the land when some dread Earthquake thrills,
Shaking the dark foundations of the hills;
Their grating adamantine depths, beneath
The ponderous, unimaginable strain and stress,
Groan shuddering as in pangs of worldwide death;

220

While their long summits stretched against the sky
Rough-edged with trackless forests, to the eye
A double outline take (as when you press
The eyeball); and the beaten roads below
In yellow undulations roll and flow;
And in broad swamps the serried flax-blades lithe,
Convulsed and tortured, rattling, toss and writhe,
As through them sweeps the swift tremendous throe:
Beasts howling run, or trembling, stand and stare,
And birds, as the huge tree-tops swing and rock,
Plunge scared into the more reliable air:—
All Nature wrung with spasm, affrighted reels
Aghast, as if the heavy chariot-wheels
Of the material God Man's infancy
Devised, in very truth were thundering by
In too intolerable majesty:—
Then he who for the first time feels the shock,
Unconscious of its source, unguessing whence
Comes flying o'er him, with oppressive sense
Of irresistible Omnipotence,
That boundless, strange, o'erwhelming influence,
At once remote and in his inmost heart,—
Is troubled most, that, with his staggering start
All the convictions from his birth upgrown,
And customary confidence, o'erthrown,
In Earth's eternal steadfastness, are gone:
Even such a trouble smote in that wild hour
Our Maiden—such revulsion shook her soul,
As o'er her swept that sense of doom—a power
And dire compulsion spurning her control!
All feelings that had been her life-long stay
Seemed from their deepest root-holds wrenched away;
No more could her convulsed, afflicted breast,

221

On childhood's loves or home-affections rest;
Her Being all upheaving seemed to be
Cast loose and drifting towards an unknown Sea;
Her heart's young world uptorn—receding fast,
Far rolled the echoes of the fading Past:—
She stood alone—herself her sole support at last.

VII.

'Tis Night;—the Maiden steals along the shore
How lone the aspect at that hour it wore!
How shelterless from all dread things—so deemed
Her superstition—wherewith Darkness teemed!
All the familiar friendliness of Day,
And all its life and stir, subsided—sunk—
Within that circling fence shut up and shrunk,
Where, snake-like coiled, the sleeping Village lay
Miles distant now its very precincts seemed.
She speeds to where her people use
To leave afloat their red canoes;
A new misfortune! all and each
Are high and dry upon the beach;
The lightest well she knew would prove
Too heavy for her strength to move.
Was she distrusted? her design
Betrayed? she cares not to divine:
Her spirit not a moment falters;
Not once her cheek its colour alters:
As he who desperate only tries
To strike one stroke before he dies,
And hardly wincing, never heeds
Some fresh deep wound as fast he bleeds—

222

So this last stroke the Maid receives;
So with impatient patience shuts,
Though to her heart it keenly cuts,
Her heart against it; if she grieves,
That grief can silently repress
With one sad smile of bitterness,
(The choking at her throat no less)
While to her aim she calmly cleaves.
Shall this defeat her fixed intent?
The Lake her purposed flight prevent?
Her favourite haunt, almost from birth
In many an hour of fearless mirth,
Her life beside it had been spent,
'Twas like her natural element!
With throbbing breast, with lips comprest,
She flings her quick and lighted glance
Determined o'er its dark expanse:
That further shore was distant—dim—
But better death than turning back!
No way but one! yes, she will swim—
Her daring path unaided track
Across that plain so still and black!—
Did not her own great Ancestress
Once swim that Lake in like distress?
Might she not dare and do the same?
Did she not feel as true a flame?—

She keeps before her mind, despite
The spirit-haunted gloom of night
That hid its waters shadowy-bright,
Its daylight image, tempting, dear,
Light blue and beautiful and clear!—

223

She tries in vain to recognize
The rolling mountain-slope where lies
The hut that holds her love—her life;
But as with daylight details rife
She bids the cherished picture rise,
She feels the spell of kindly eyes;
One kindly voice inviting cries;
One living presence sweeps from view
The distance and the darkness too;
Before its thrilling influence driven,
All scruples to the winds are given!
What to her is far or near?
What has she to do with fear!—
Her light dress lightly flung aside—
See! she has dashed into the waters wide!

VIII.

Delicious to her throbbing heart—
Delicious to her fevered brain
Was that cool loving water! Eagerly
She dipped her head, again—again—
As if it could appease the inward smart,
Could charm away the choking pain.

Then fully conscious first she seemed to be
How she had launched upon her lonely way;
As from a dream first perfectly awoke
To all the dangers of her bold essay.
So singling out and noting well
A star, that near the mountain's verge
Obscure and vague, hung just above
The spot as even in darkness she could tell

224

Whence she had seen his boat emerge
So oft, as on her hill-top she would bask
On that forlorn look-out of Love,—
She fixed upon its twinkling spark
Her course to guide, her goal to mark;
Then with a calmer pulse and steadier stroke,
Gave herself up to her adventurous task.

225

Canto the Second. The Song-cheered Swimming.

1. Amo in the Lake. Water-fowl. 2. Song of a damsel eloping in a canoe. River scenery. 3. Rest on a tree-stump half-submerged. 4. Thoughts of her father. Love resistless.

I.

Swim, Amohia, swim!—with strong swift grace she swims;
Lightly in silence cleaves the pathway smooth.
The water's gurgle from her waving limbs,
Only its ripple from her flexile limbs—
Seems less to break than gently soothe
The hush of solemn Silence as she swiftly swims.

And now the cooling lymph more calmly breasting,
She comes upon some wild-fowl resting:
And as soft-plashing she intrudes
Into their glassy open home so wide,
And feels the solemn still impress
Of sweetly-sheltering loneliness—
“Safe in their gleaming solitudes”
She sighs, “each bird with what it loves allied!

226

How well doth for his trusting broods
The Spirit of the Lake provide!”
With startled glance their heads they raise,
One movement quick from side to side,
Then far into the dimness sail
With shrill wild cry and dripping trail.
As each into the still air dashes,
Its level-flapping wing-tips make
Upon the else unruffled Lake
A double row of silver splashes
Spurting a moment in its wake.
She smiles: “Ah, had I wings like you,
Could be so soon love-nestled too!—
Dread Spirit! help me too as well,
Whom no irreverent thoughts compel
Unwillingly to break the spell
Of Silence lone wherein you dwell!”

II.

Lightly along her liquid path she presses;
Nor yet the toil her buoyant frame distresses.
Anon, as patiently she sped,
There came as of itself into her head
An old and simple lay,
She oft had sung in many a happier day,
About a maid her home for love forsaking;
And the recurring rhythm making
The effort of volition less,
And so preventing weariness,—

227

Though scarce a meaning to its phrases linking—
She kept into her spirit drinking
The metre's chime—a kind of rest from thinking;
And steadily aside the crystal waters flinging,
Kept murmuring the old rhyme in time—she had no breath for singing:—

1.

“The freshet is flowing,
But growing quite clear;
The full river flashes
And gurgles and dashes
With tinklings and plashes
How pleasant to hear!
The tiny bright billows
That lately were whirling
So turbid and dun,
Are playfully curling,
And merrily glance as they dance in the Sun!—
To the current confiding
My little canoe,
See! joyously gliding
My course I pursue.
Look! carelessly twirling
The paddle I sit,
The river deciding
Which way we shall flit:
I sit all alone,
No fear have I, none!
For I know to what quarter its waters will run!

228

2.

“And see how, while speeding,
A Maiden unheeding,
Wherever those curling
Crisp billows are leading,—
Never raising a mast or
The light sail unfurling,
But leaving my boat free to float as it will;
The rich breeze comes after
To waft her the faster,
The faster to waft her
To where out of sight
Stands a cottage so bright;
(Ah well do I know it,
Rush-wall and red rafter
And carvings so gay!)
Which oft far away
I have watched half the day,
When the sunbeam would show it
One spot of red light
Beneath the deep-glooming, far-looming blue hill.

3.

“No obstacles stay me,
No dangers delay me!
The streams,—where the river
In summer dividing
In silvery threads,
Slips hurriedly gliding
O'er glittering beds
Of shingle,—all mingled, you nowhere can see!

229

All the rapids wherever
The water ran creaming,
And, flashing and gleaming
From humps and from shoulders
Of obstinate boulders,
Snow-tassels offstreaming
Would flutter and quiver,—
They have vanished—replenished to let me go free!
And the broad yellow spaces
Where lost were all traces
Of the creaming, the flashing,
The streaming, the dashing,
The stir and the strife;
Where you heard not a murmur,
No chatter or churme or
Low musical plaint;
Where the gravel-beds wholly
Concealing it, slowly
The river went oozing
Beneath, and gave life
To a few dainty bosses
Of pallid gray mosses,
Such fragrance diffusing
Delicious and faint;—
They are gone—they have vanished—all banished for me!

4.

“The ranks of green rushes
With their brown knobs of down,

230

Where the stream's overflow
Creeps dimpling and slow,
How gentle their stirring
As softly conferring
They murmur so low!
In a moment 'tis done;
They are still every one!
As they stand in a row
And watch me, I know
Why it is they are so;
I know each green lisper
Fears even a whisper
May show where I go, who the rover must be!
And the louder flax-bushes
With their crowding and crossing
Black stems darkly studded
With blossoms red-blooded—
Their long blades are tossing
As the breeze comes up quicker
(So wantonly spilling
The honeysweet liquor
Their ruddy cups filling);—
Hark! pattering, playing,
They rustle in glee;
And I fancy them saying:
‘O fondly, O fleetly
She flies—never heed her,
For Love is her leader;
And fairly and featly
He steers, who but he!
Then mind her not—hinder not—let her go free!’—

231

And brighter and higher,
Like flames of pale fire,
The great plumes far and wide
Of the sword-grass aspire;
In their grace and their pride
They are all on my side!
See! feather to feather
How bending together
They seem to try whether
My flight they may hide;
‘We know to what meeting,
How blissful a greeting
The runaway fleeting
So fondly would glide;—
Droop thickly—wave quickly—that no one may see!’

5.

“Then, Father, why chide her,
Your darling, your pride, or
Lament at her going
Whatever betide her!
For though your eyes glisten,
O how can she listen—
To such a fond lover the rover has flown!
Unavailing the wailing,
And idle to chide her,
When breezes freshblowing,
When waters quickflowing,
All fair things upgrowing
And waving beside her,
Will but guide and confide her to one heart alone!”

232

Thus, not without a sense forlorn and dreary
How doubtful her own flight and fate
Beside that maiden's, speeding to her mate
With answered love and confidence elate,
Poor Amohia swims till she is weary.

III.

A welcome rest! Above the surface, see,
Projects the stump of a long-sunken tree:
Last remnant of a forest-giant
That once with outflung arms defiant,
With all his green fraternity
Stood shouldering out the dappled sky
On this same spot, and shed around
Noon-twilights where in leafy shade
The golden tremors sparely played;
Or in the echoing hush profound
At intervals the soft quick beats
Of the wild-pigeon's winnowing wing,
Subsiding whisper-like, betrayed
Where high up in his green retreats,
He flitted leisurely at feed.—
The mighty forest like a weed
Has withered—vanished like a dream!
The sky is bare, and everywhere
Above you spreads the empty air,
Around the lonely waters gleam:
Where insects burrowed, hummed and swarmed
The wildfowl dips; and, unalarmed,
In silvery shoals the minnows stream,
Their thousands moving with one will;
Or, lying motionless and still

233

On tiny fins self-balancing,
Like spreading arrows shoot away
If any swimming Maiden may
Perchance their crystal-folded slumbers fray.
Such wondrous change can compassed be
By Ru, the Earthquake-God's decree,
Who lifts and lowers the groaning land
As in the hollow of his hand.

To this old timeworn stump unsought
Her slightly devious course had brought
The unconscious Maid, direct and true,
So that perforce it was descried.
She found a footing on its side,
And as a long deep breath she drew,
And firm her panting bosom prest
The filmy weeds that o'er it grew
Light green, and dangling rose and fell,
Listless in the lapping swell
Her swimming left,—her arms she threw
Around it, grateful for the timely rest.
Spontaneous gratefulness—to whom and why?
Wondrous, with no one to be grateful to,
That thus the natural heart should ever fly,
Thus gravitate, as 'twere, if left alone,
To something all unseen, unknown:
That its perennial lights, intense or dwindling,
To bold clear Love and Adoration kindling,
Or dimly down to Fetish fear declining,
Keep pointing to a polestar—nowhere shining!
You pity her—untaught and rude
To know how blind such gratitude;
Who threw away vain thanks because

234

Her own proceedings and intent
Just then fell out coincident
With the fixed working of cast-iron laws;
And so o'erlooked in ignorance
That principle to minds profound
So much more rational and sound,
Her real benefactor—Chance!

IV.

But right the sentiment or wrong,
It was not one to hold her long.
To her deserted Father flew
Her thoughts—his anguish when her clothes they found:
What if his Child, his grey hair's pride were drowned!
Her loss how would he brood upon and rue;
With dim eyes, in the sleepy old canoe,
With pole and hoopnet as he used to do,
Fishing perhaps the long day through;
Unconscious half, in his distress
And heedless of his ill-success.
To think of his despair her bosom bled;
Yet how could they upbraid her that she fled?
Could they, if all were known, bid her contend
Against a fate she could not help nor mend?
Was Love to be resisted? Could they blame her
If that insidious Power o'ercame her?
Because they could not see nor feel
The spell whose tyrannous control
Absorbed, entranced her mind—her soul,
Should they expect she could reject
Its might, her heart against it steel?
As well—(for as her feelings rose,
The oriental fancy, bred

235

And born with her, and through all joys and woes
With metaphor and song for ever fed,
At once in quick spontaneous chaunt
Expressing all the moment's want,
Again to Nature's ways and shows
For vindication and example sped)
As well upbraid the feathery clouds of Morning,
Because the unrisen Sun is out of sight,
For not in cold impassive pallor scorning
The first faint touches of his cheering light;
As well expect their snowy fleeces,
As upward from his seahid cave he rushes,
Not to be heart-struck into burning blushes;
Or as he nigher comes and nigher
And the soft-flowing splendour still increases,
Though all his disc be hidden yet,
As well expect the basking brood
No further to drink-in the blissful flood,
But fling it eddying back, nor let
The rosy blushes rapture-kindle into golden fire!
“Ah no!” she thought, while her full bosom heaves
A sigh—“with me no more than these—Ah no,
It cannot be—it never can be so!
Him I was born, compelled to love—I know;
Him I shall love—him ever—till the day
When with thick coronals of freshest leaves
The maids and matrons to my funeral go!”—
In fresh resolve the passing pang she smothers,
And dashes, as it starts, the tear away:
Then with a half impatience and mute pain
She turns into the yielding Lake again;
Again the Lake's mild breast receives her like a Mother's!

236

Canto the Third. The Star-lit Swimming.

1. Amo swimming still. 2. The Starry Heavens. What ideas natural to the vision she missed; 3. And what resultant feelings. Adoration higher than Logic? 4, 5. What she did see and feel. 6. Exhaustion. 7. Land. 8. A warm bath.

I.

Swim, Amohia, swim!—with patient toil she swims,
In solemn silence, night, and loneliness.
Steady the star-reflections, every flake
Like dropping arrows, golden, motionless,
Hang on the shadowy polish of the Lake;
Only the waving of her lithe young limbs
Sets them a little trembling, or bedims
And quenches them, as through their glittering trails she swims.

Once more the Maiden's vigour flags;
Wearily now her languid frame she drags;
So on her back to rest her arms she turns,
And with her feet alone the water slowly spurns.

237

II.

But when at once right o'er her swung
The whole enormous lighted dome of Heaven,
What feelings in her bosom sprung?—

Not fraught indeed for her the glorious vision
With all the myriad miracles 'tis given
Our tutored sight to marvel at therein;
Thickstarred Immensities—O what were fields Elysian—
Softswarded glooms of Paradise
Fire-streaked with glancing lovelit eyes;
Or that pure Empyrean where the bards divine—
Of Albion or the Florentine,
In world-entrancing everliving dreams,
Saw jacinth-downs and topaz-spurting streams
And uplands opaline;
Champaigns of sheeted pearl with rosy-green
Reflections shot, and mildest rainbow-sheen,
Where snowdrifts of blest Angels spread and swarm
And scatter, on the rolling grand Hosanna-storm
Uplifted—floated—borne away!
Or rounded to a snowy world-wide rose
With golden heart where God's own brilliance glows;—
What seem all these to that tremendous scene,
But tinselled stagework—transient—mean—
Poor craft of some mere mortal mechanician!
—Nor could her fancy science-guided stray—
From those bold fires that here and there
Like vanward sentinels low hovering hung,

238

Rejoicing in some kingly trust,—
Through an immeasurable array
Of evervarying mingling lights
Pausing in multitudinous troops
On still retiring higher heights
As on some vast celestial palace-stair;
Or poured forth infinite in scattering groups
And endlessly-recurring shoal on shoal;
With luminous depths on all sides leading
To deeper depths that evermore receding
And evermore reopening lose
Themselves in labyrinthine avenues
Of glory unspeakable! a maze
Of vistas intricate that everywhere
Away and upward roll
Into a dimness splendid with a dust
Of Suns—a gleaming haze,
A visible shining cloud
Of specks invisible—all worlds—and all avowed
Only a handbreadth of the outstanding Whole!
O not for her the eternal flood
Of worlds in bloom and worlds in bud;
The lightning-speeded cataract of Creation
Boundless and bounding on for ever;
Chaotic mass or cosmic—brood on brood
Evolving, intermitting never,
To dash and daze the strongest-winged imagination!
Full many a sun-thronged Universe that dwindles
To a tiny film of light,
So far off in the Infinite!
Full many a flying Ocean of bright Mist that kindles
At its deep core eddy-curled
And whirls and thickens to a world;

239

Or at its vasty margin thinning
Drops lagging vapour-belts and luminous rings
That shrink apart, like breaking strings
Of jewels, into moons and satellites,
Fresh-starting on their separate flights,
And on new centres spinning!
—The trailing spawn of Systems vapour-tangled;
And seeded masses of stargrain like roes
Of fishes, so the congregated clusters close—
Ay, golden ovaries of great globes in myriads—all
By distance inconceivable comprest
Into the semblance of a swarming ball
Of pin's-head spiders in their whitewebbed nest:—
—The swallow-swoop of Comets as they flee
In the wild race of revelry;
Each like some mad enamoured Bayadere
That darts from out the throng to where
Sits in full-diamonded pride
Her mighty Rajah awful-eyed,
As if, athirst for his caresses,
To fling herself upon his blazing breast;
But catching as she comes anear
The kingly-chilling glitter of his glance,
Swerves off abashed in full career
Again into the reeling dance!
So, down upon their Sun-God dashing
With sudden shift these couriers swift
Still scour away into Infinitude—off-flashing
With all their hundred million leagues of luminous tresses
Into the fathomless abysses
To make amid the astonished spheres
Their sportive circuit of a thousand years!
Or say, 'twere but the wake they trace

240

Lashing to foam-light as they race
Quiescent force asleep in space—
Still—still they spurn all resting-place!—
—Then all the sensitive Planets as they float,
In their enormous solitudes
Troubled mysteriously—the changeful moods
Reflecting of their kindred most remote;
So delicately alive to and returning
Each faint and far off sister's finest yearning;
In their elastic orbits wheeling
Eternal rounds of sympathetic feeling.—

III.

Not these—not all the vast sublimities that lurk
Within the visible sphere—the o'erpowering whole
Disclosed by the optic tube that dares to thrust
The flaming portals wide asunder
And show the great Enigma at its secret work
So silent—boundless—beautiful, it strikes the Soul
Into hushed tears of awe and ecstasy and wonder!
Yet fires it with impatient thirst to be
Knit somehow nearer,
In vision clearer,
Communion dearer
With the impenetrable mute Mystery
That flings such glories freely all around us
Unsoundable by such a mite as Man;
And yet has left them ours,
And us with partial powers
The mighty surface of the work to scan
And apprehend—not comprehend—a plan;
And feel they need not utterly confound us,

241

Nor lay us under ‘Matter's’ loathly ban;
Nor by ‘Necessity's’ cold confines bound us!—
For shut out from the eyes of wiser Sense
That palpable Omnipotence,
And in the flashing face of it descend
To doughtiness of reasoning—where will end
Your task—to what conviction tend?
Will not the dominance of Law all through
And prescient purpose—still accomplished too—
Pronounce in spite of analytic brawl
One Will—one conscious Mind—the cause of all?
Or call it Force, self-causing—if you will—
'Tis Force that infinitely varying, still
Through myriad myriad evolutions ranges;
Into a million simultaneous streams divides;
At once through all without confusion glides;
And keeps their mystic momentary changes
Springing in mutual fitness forth—agreeing
As each the fresh results of all foreseeing:—
What powers has Mind such Force does not possess—
What knowledge proper to self-consciousness?—

But say your reasoning never can extract
From that transcendent overwhelming revelation
Some finite supernatural spirit-fact
That bows and shrinks to petty ‘demonstration,’
And so defies all Logic's undermining,—
Take the completest human Being, combining
With Reason—Reverence and Imagination—
Of Intellect and Feeling all compact;
On him how likeliest will it ever act?—

242

Will it not launch on such a Soul a flood
Of irresistible uplifting inspiration
That spurns at slow deductions, wrong or right,
Too poor for consciousness so vast?—not smite
Into that ampler Soul a rapture bright
Of awe and adoration and delight,
And leave for its ecstatic mood
No outlet, no expression, no relief,
But in one grand conception in whose blaze
Poor Logic withers with her creeping ways;
And stands confessed an attribute
Lower and likelier for the brute,
For things that crawl and things that plod,—
But in one blinding Truth and chief
Of Truths—ne'er to be fathomed—ne'er defined—the feeling, God!

IV.

Well—though there rose not to the Maiden's mind
Such visions with such thoughts entwined,
She could not fail
Awestruck to mark how vast a bed
Of brilliants was above her spread,
As 'twere the sediment and golden grail
By some great Sea of upper Light deposited:
Nor all the finer showers of gems that far away
Fused into fainter light-wreaths lay
Marbling the mournful depths of solemn blue:
Nor how across it all meandering wide
Went a pale, luminous smoke that swarmed

243

With sparks, as from the unseen fires it rose
Of some vast spectral beings that performed
Their unimaginable rites outside:
She wondered too
At those mysterious stains of darkest hue,
Unfathomable shafts of blindest vacancy
Like scathing tracks of Demon dread
Before whose flight the myriad brilliances
Shrank blighted—marred—as shrink and close
Rock-purpling tribes of sea-anemones
Beneath the careless tread
Of one who by the side of Ocean goes.

But shunning all that glorious Company
A falling star—look! swift and furtively
Slides into light a moment, and is gone!
Of all unnoted, noting none;
In stealthy chase (she thought) or bent
On secret mission—but apart, alone—
And utterly absorbed in his unknown intent.

All was so solemn, vast, ethereal, strange—
Complete within its wondrous self—removed
So far from our dark world of chance and change,
From all she hoped, or feared, or loved,
The longer on the scene she dwelt,
More helpless still the maiden felt,
More feeble, specklike, in the gleaming dumb Immensity.

V.

What, though she had been taught to trace
Amid the million throbbing hearts of fire,

244

Ancestral spirits of her race
Whose fame had won them that high place,—
Those steady stars, unwinking, bold,
That well might souls of heroes be,
From them, so proud, and calm, and cold
How could she look for sympathy?
But where were they, so gentle, clear,
Sweet innocent spirits in timid lustres shrined,
Whom oft at twilight she would mark
Come trembling through the melting dark,
As then, then only confident enough
(Like fawns upon the point to turn and fly)
With fluttering heart to hesitate so nigh?—
They must be, sure, of tenderer stuff,—
Have souls that pity could inspire!

Ah, idle seemed the fond desire
Amid the thronging hosts to find
One kindred heart from whom a Maid
Might look for love or hope for any aid!
For if her glance for many moments rested
On any single group of all that sprinkled
The skies, the fancy then her brain infested,
They were tall radiant Figures downward peering
From shining strongholds, high and free
And safe above her, while behind them leering
Still more and more kept crowding in to see,
With eyes that with malicious pleasure twinkled
At her poor puny efforts. And her guide,
Her pilot star could be no more descried;
So by the glorious vision more deprest
Than strengthened by the partial rest,

245

She turns again,
And plies her weary shoulders with increasing pain.

Poor outworn Amohia!—world-abandoned Maid,
Thy brave strong heart is now thine only aid!

VI.

“Ah! if at last I sink—”
It blanched her cheek to think
The thought—her heart a moment ceased to beat—
“Oh might I then on that dear shore be thrown
And by Ranóro found alone!
And if he loved me with a love like mine
Ah, would not even then my bosom own
Some feeble flutter of a joy divine
When frantic he would clasp, the cold, cold form
With vain caresses warm;
No love returned, no answering heat;
Then curse the intolerable light—nor stay—
But dashing out his life in some quick way
While the loathed Universe whirled off his brain,
With fainting fervour strain
Our dead and dying hearts together—never to part again!

But if, as once I think you said,—
Laughing at what I told you of the gloom
And sordid horror of our Reinga dread—
The white man hopes a better doom
For spirits of the dead,
Oh would not mine low hovering for a while,

246

Linger for yours, Ranoro! Then, O bliss! to speed
Together to that happier land—
For they would rush together freed,
And wondering with a pensive happy smile
At all the maddening care and heed
That vexed the senseless forms entwined upon the strand.

Nay, live, Ranoro! live—and sometimes give
A thought to your poor—lost—” The bitter tear
Was checked before it reached her eyes;
And that throat-agony forbid to rise:
With resolute will
She bids the unnerving visions disappear;
And the brave Maiden tries
To rally her spent force with thoughts of meeting,
With the deep rapture of Ranoro's greeting.
Alas, though feebly struggling still
With patient anguish on her brow,
Poor gallant Amohia is exhausted now!

VII.

But see! upon the hillside glows,
Unmoving, bright, a sudden light!
Oh joyous sight, 'tis his, she knows!
New hope, new life, new strength she gains;
It feeds her brain with will—with warmth her veins.
And now she is aware how on the right
A mountain spur, as if in friendly guise
Has stolen forward to surprise
And catch—say rather, to embrace her!

247

How high the hills that darkly face her
Have grown! the darkly-branching trees
Are mingling with the stars, she sees:
A kind of gentle stir is in the air;
Faint sounds of life, though life at rest, are there.—
Like an accordion suddenly
Opened and shut by some one nigh,
Two loud harsh notes assail her ear—
The night-hawk's! harsh but yet so near!
She blest them! to her present plight
Seemed never song-bird's notes so dear,
So sweet as that melodious screech
Startling the darkness with delight!
With desperate strokes she presses forward fast—
She feels that they must be her last.
With downthrust foot she strives to reach—
O joy—O bliss!—she feels for and has found,
Can touch that deep salvation—the firm ground!
One stroke—one other yet—a moment more
She staggers, falls—upon the pumice-whitened shore.

VIII.

Cold, shivering, stiff,—with drooping eyes,
Slow-beating pulse and gasping sighs
Long prostrate on the ground she lies.
'Twas the night-chill those Lakes have, ev'n in summer,
More than the distance, that had so o'ercome her.—
But gleaming in the Moon's new-risen beam
She sees not far a little puff of steam;
She struggles towards it slowly—half-alive;
That lucky spring will soon her languid frame revive!

248

It was a sparry basin, smoothly lipped and fringed
With snowy stalactite, just tinged
With a faint delicate flush
Like that white rose, the ‘maiden-blush.’
The water seemed a liquid piece of heaven—so blue—
Of midmost heaven a lonely piece
Laid bare by a slight breach in the summer-fleece;
And look what sparkling crowds of bubbles through
Diaphonous azure, fast and ever
Escaping in the fountain's fever
Are trembling up with timorous haste to greet
And deck with diamond grail the beauteous guest,
As down she sinks into her lucid seat
And in transparent sapphire makes her warm and liquid nest.

249

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;

250

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;

251

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!”

252

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

253

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.

254

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;

255

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

256

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;

257

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!”

258

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

259

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.”

260

Canto the Fifth. Amohia at the Fountain.

1. A child from the hut goes for water to the fountain. 2. Amo hiding sings a song. 3. Its meaning. 4. Child, frightened, reports a Native ‘Fairy’ at the well. 5. Ranolf goes out to see, musing on ‘Spirits.’

I.

The night wore on; his friends were gone;
Still Ranolf paced and mused alone.
It chanced, a little lad who slept
In his men's hut that evening—come
For change' sake from his neighbouring home—
Felt thirsty; from his mattings crept,
The yellow calabash to find,
Which, hollowed out, a hardened rind,
Was mostly full of water kept.
'Twas empty: looking out, “'Tis light
(He thought) almost as day:”—so quite
Forgot his native fear of Night,

261

And to the spring beneath the hill
Set off his calabash to fill.

II.

The spring was close beside the path
To that quick-bubbling crystal bath
Where Amohia rested; she
Could in the moonlit distance see
The cot and its karaka-tree,
And Ranolf now emerge, so clear,
Now in its shadow disappear.
And she had marked the little lad
Set off her way with heart how glad;
And when he neared her bright retreat,
That heart with high expectance beat.

Hard-by there grew in snowy bloom
Thickets of aromatic broom;
Within whose green impervious screen,
Stand but a yard, she ne'er were seen.
Into the copse she quickly slipped,
Three steps from where the fountain dripped.
There, breathless, stirless, on the watch,
She formed her little scheme—until
The thirsty lad had drunk his fill,
And held his calabash to catch
The water of the trickling spring.
Then in a warbling voice, low sweet and wild,
That intertwined with its harmonious plash,
The hidden Girl began to sing

262

A ditty to the startled Child
About a “fountain” and “a calabash:”

1.

“Golden water! golden water!
Flowing freely, flowing ever,
Flowing since the World began;
What shall we pour it in—
Heedfully store it in?—
If your calabash be not quite clean—if any foulness begrime or besmutch it,
Oh you never will catch the clear rillet—it will shrink away as you touch it!

2.

“Golden water! golden water!
Flowing coyly, dried up never
Since Tumátau moulded Man;
Flowing so tamelessly,
Seeming so aimlessly!—
Would you catch it with hands unsteady, or a heart with passion fretted?
Would you guide it in spouts of flax-leaf as you please?—Oh, you'll only get wetted!”—

The Child, at first too terrified
Even to run away, stood there
Holding the calabash in air,
With cheeks all blanched—mouth gaping wide,
And eyes outstarting; reassured
A little now, he seemed to gain
Some heart to list the simple strain;

263

But 'twas the voice that most allured,
And most his confidence secured.
Had not the Maid been ever known
And loved for that melodious tone?
And was it not at birth instilled,
That voice like Music? when they killed
In numbers at her name-day feast,
The Korimáko, sweetest bird
Of all that are in forest heard?
That so, with prayers of chanting priest,
The spirit of their sweetness might
Upon the happy Child alight,
And her maturing accents be
Unmatched for kindred melody?—
So, doubtful if to run or stay,
He stood—while she resumed her lay:

3.

“Crystal water! crystal water!
Glistening out, then disappearing;
Blinding those who wink and blink:
How to get near it, then?—
Forward, ne'er fear it, then!
Sharp eye and free step—no crawling or creeping sideways like a shellfish—
All else like an innocent Child—confiding—straightforward—unselfish!

4.

“Crystal water! crystal water!
Chilling often, often cheering,

264

Numbing those who cease to drink:
How can we use it well?—
Drink and diffuse it well!
If in finely carved cisterns you try to enclose it securely—
Tiny monsters will breed there and wriggle—it will stagnate impurely.

5.

“Diamond water! diamond water!
Warbling to all tribes and ages,
Welling near us yet apart:
Who is it guards it so?
Watches and wards it so?—
If you fear any Spirit too much, you'll ne'er see it though flowing close by you—
But revere you no Spirit at all?—what you drink will but petrify you.

6.

“Diamond water! diamond water!
With still, lucent eye of Sages,
But with Childhood's open heart;
So may you light on it,
Thrive and grow bright on it!”—
Here Amohia from the thicket springing
Whisked from his hand the flask it clung to, singing.

“Though your calabash be battered, bruised,—yet fear not you to fill it,—
For the better 'twill hold, the fresher keep, this flitting, magical rillet.”

265

III.

—This was a song, in fact, by Ranolf made
And turned to Maori to assay
His skill, and see how far would reach
Or be constrained, the native speech;
When sport was slack one summer day,
As ambushed in tall reeds he lay
Just in the wary wild-duck's way;—
While thinking by what wonder it befel,
And with what natural supernatural aid,
The mighty Stream—the fluent race of Man,
Since first its mystic course began,
Even while in foam and turbulence it ran
Adown those ancient faintly-glimmering slopes,
The shadowy-lit Himálayas of old Time,
Had still been fed from age to age
With springs of Spiritual Truth sublime;
Rillets and runnels of immortal Hopes:
Some crystal Soul of saint or sage
For the great river timeously supplied;
Slipping, as 'twere, from any side,
Into its clouded and tumultuous tide:—
And how above, around us, and below
Those myriad-branching rivulets may flow
Capriciously, it seems, yet ever feeding
The heart of Man when most 'tis needing:—
Then all the evil that proceeds
From dams and dykes of narrow Creeds;—
Last how to enter that coy shadowy ground,
And the pure runnel's bright arrival wait;

266

Or in what spirit penetrate
Up to the airhung crevices of snow,
Or thicket-stifled gorges, dense, profound,
Where those divinest Wellsprings may abound.—

Well, but this Song, a glimpse, a hint,
An impress from Reflection's mint
Struck faintly of a theme so vast—
Of a wide bee-eyed truth one tiny facet
With nothing but simplicity to grace it—
The fancy of the native girls had caught
(Who only of its literal meaning thought)
And Amohia's self had reached at last.

IV.

But that slight gesture of the Maid
Which tossed the calabash away,
Renewed the fears her song allayed;
No gift had bribed the Child to stay.
To Ranolf's side he scampered back
Aghast, agape with fright—Alack!
There was a Spirit at the well,
A Pátu-páere! he could tell
That voice so sweet—that form so fair,
Those eyes, with such a dancing glare!—
Rebuked, cross-questioned, coaxed or jeered,
Still to his tale the lad adhered.
So Ranolf, as he could not sleep,
And must perforce a vigil keep,
Strolled to the Spring himself to see
What might this wondrous Spirit be.

267

V.

“Spirits—still Spirits!—strange that every race
Of Man,” thought Ranolf as he went,
“Still on that fixed idea is bent,
That in some fashion, form, or place,
Spirit without Matter can and does exist:
Yet to its source whene'er we trace
Some record of its presence, sent
Without a bodily environment,
The ‘proof’ (so-called) is always missed.
What then?—Is Matter's self much better off?
Prove its appearance unallied
With Spirit, if you can. Sure, Reason's pride
Should spurn the refuge of a scoff,
When Matter's very being is denied,
And bring us proof. Probe Matter to the last,
Nothing but active Spirit will be found:
Aye, all we see and hear, the glorious round
Of our sensations has no other ground;
Only their sequence stands so fixed and fast;
In such unchanged alliance are they passed
Before us by the Master-Showman's hand.—
All Ghosts and Apparitions here we stand!
And for your vulgar ‘Ghosts’ indeed
'Tis breach of sequence only that we need
Produce—no more; prove shadows may succeed
Each other in a series yet to law
Unknown; find but a single certain flaw
Or falter in the dream-procession grand.
An easy task, 'twould seem! And yet 'tis true
'Tis that—that merely—there are none can do!”

268

Canto the Sixth. Silence and Moonlight.

1. Ranolf can find no one. Silence. Moonlight. 2. A lizard and a mantis watching. 3. Sudden sense of the phenomenal character of things visible, and consciousness of the Spiritual and Real. 4. What is this Soul in Nature?—5. Returning, his hand touched. 6. A vision.

I.

So Ranolf musing, down the hill
Had sauntered to the trickling rill.
There, all save its low plash was still;
Only a movement caught his eye
Scarce visible, as he drew nigh
The thicket dense that grew thereby;
Only a bough's-top in the brake
Did for a single moment shake.
He pushed straight towards it through the broom;
But finding nothing in the gloom,
Came out upon the open Lake.

Still all was lonely—silent—bright;
Only himself and living light!—

He followed where the pathway wound
Beneath the cliffs, with many a turn

269

Round buttressed steep, projecting mound,
And waterscarped low spur tree-crowned,
Or rocky—bare of bush or fern.

One of these last he just had passed:—
Beyond it lay in deepest shade
A dense ravine's mouth, which had made
With clustered shrubs a safe retreat
For foemen of pursuit afraid.
He paused:—could mark no trace of feet,
No sign of life—before—around;
Saw nothing move—heard not a sound—
But keenly gazed into the gloom profound.

No sound, indeed, no motion. All in tune
With speaking Silence. Even the Moon
Lulled in the lap of Heaven serene
Lay back—albeit with watchful mien.
Transfigured by her flooding rays
To airy cloud, the Mountains blue
Up to their floating goddess threw
A rapt and meditative gaze.

II.

Upon the moonlit fractured rock beside him,
With not a rustle that the ear would strike,
A rapid-wriggling Lizard lightning-like
Leapt into stoniest stillness. In the dark,
Only a steady diamond spark
Told where it watching stood and sidelong eyed him.

270

“How well,” he thought, “these creatures suit,
How well uphold their ill-repute;
By all these natives held in dread,
Because informed by Spirits of the dead.”

In the full stream of light,
Close to his cheek, projecting on his right,
His glance was resting on a bright green sprig
Of broom-like myrtle.—As he looked, it grew
To something that was watching too.
A span-long Phasmid then he knew,
Stretching its forelimbs like a branching twig
In air, and motionless as death—
Save that it swayed its frail form to and fro
Gently, as in a soft wind's dying breath,
And then subsided slow
To rigid stillness. There,
Its forelimbs still outstretched in air,
With startling faith in its weird wondrous trick
Of aping lower life, the animated Stick
In watchful mood
Close to his cheek unmoving stood.

III.

Suspense how fixed and strange—
Dumb witchery of magic change!
Swift spritelike life to seeming death—and seeming
Inanimate life to deathlike animation—
The real and seeming seemed to waver, reel, and mingle!
“One of those flashes for a moment gleaming,”
Such our self-watching watcher's meditation—

271

“When o'er the Soul the thought will pass,
‘Is it illusion then, this whole Creation,
This outward Universe, a breath on glass?’—
One of those pauses in the rush
Of Life's phantasmagoric dreaming,
When in the hush,
The Spiritual speaks in vivid hints that tingle
Through our material framework, listening vigilant;
And as the deep-sea plummet, Consciousness,
Strikes soundings on the eternal adamant
Beneath the visionary Ocean
Whereon our frail barks ever forward press,
And rock and nod
With such unquiet motion,—
Lo! the revealing veil of God
Called Nature—as transpierced by darkling light
Divine—imprisoned splendour—on the fret
To escape for all her cunning might,
Emits keen sparkles in her own despite;
And seems one moment almost to forget
Her tantalizing trust, her mystic high vocation;
Seems for a thrilling moment, just about
To turn transparent wholly, and to let
Her awful Secret out.”

The conscious Silence seemed to win
Its way across the fleshly dross
To some responsive sense akin
His own deep soul within;
As in the shadowy river pool
Below the rapids, still and full,
Two floating globules nearing run
Together into one.

272

And now a little breath of air,
That had, it seemed, been lurking there,
Itself the moonlit calm enjoying,
Along the white bright-shadowy cliffs behind him,
Stealing as if glad to find him,
Came creeping through his hair and with its clusters toying;
Then passed—and left the lonely shore,
Hushed and breathless as before.

Again the haunting shy mistrust
Of Nature's simplest doings thrust
Its coy suggestive self between
The sensuous impress on his brain
And the conclusion, else so plain,
Of what it was, might be or mean.
Almost he could have held it true,
That fancy of the land he knew,
The creeping breeze must be a Spirit too
He dallied with the whim awhile;
Then with a musing smile,
His idle quest renounced as vain,
Turned his cottage to regain.

IV.

“What is there,” he thought, “in the scene, in the hour,
The moonlight—the silence—that tempts us to dower
All Nature thus with spiritual power?
Can it be that their magical influence
But awakes in ourselves a keener sense
Of some mysterious manifold chain—
The myriad channels that may knit
Magnetic currents of the brain,

273

Or subtler filaments more fit,
Along which Thought and Feeling flit,
To those that permeate Air and Earth
And all things that from these have birth?
Linking in one consentient whole
All Nature to each living Soul;
And opening for each Soul again
Subtle ways of intercourse
With every other, near, aloof;
An infinite web of spiritual force,
An universal warp-and-woof
Of Sympathy; though yet but rare
The minds whereby, the moments when,
The mystic threads and what they bear
(Like gossamers fine in autumn air
That softly undulate, float, and run,
Viewless but where they catch the sun)
Are brought within the conscious ken?”

V.

Slowly, and with looks downbent,
On such wayward thoughts intent,
By the rocky path he went.
Suddenly a hand is thrown
Lightly, softly on his own.
Lightly as rosy apple-bloom
Comes twirling to the orchard-grass,
When April winds that gaily pass
Kiss it away to its sunny doom.
So softly o'er his fingers flew
That timid playful pressure too—
The velvet plumage, all aglow
With jetty black and violet blue,

274

Of the crimson-billed porphyrio,
That jerking struts among the cool
Thick rushes by their rust-red pool—
Felt never more soft, more downy-smooth.
Quickly turned the startled youth,
And the sight that met his eyes
Brightened them with glad surprise.

VI.

There was a deeply scooped recess
In the rock-side's ruggedness,
Hollow and arching: you discern
Through the moon-illumined gloom,
Mantling it above, below,
Wondrous work of Nature's loom—
Delicate broidery like a bride's—
Traceried wealth of many a fern.
Some are filmy-fine and soaking wet,
By the ever-oozing lymph
Matted to its dripping sides;
Some are thatch-like thick-layered—some plume-like and free;
Some like fingers outspread, that caressing and fond
Would clutch at all comers whoever they be;
Some soft, silver-woven, down-pointing and broad,
Like Seraphim's wings when their eyes they would shade
From the shock of that Robe-Skirt's ineffable load
Of splendour that else the high heavens dismayed!
But finger-like, feather-like, wing-like,—each frond
(As by daylight the curious eye might see!)

275

Bedropt and bestudded and thickly beset
With intricate, daintiest fancy-freaks
Of golden spots and russet streaks.
More gracefully draperied niche never yet
Enshrined the pure graces of goddess or nymph;
And rarely has Goddess or Wood-nymph been
With statelier graces endued than were seen
In the Maiden who stood in that alcove so green!

276

Canto the Seventh. The Meeting.

1. Venus Anadyomene. A simile. 2. Amo in the moonlit grotto. 3. Her address. 4. Ecstasy speechless. 5. Native espousals. Ranolf's murmured Song.

I.

In days when Nature—ere discharmed—
Undeified by Science—swarmed
With bright Divinities akin
To the energies terrific
In her wilder phases working,
Or in genial ferment lurking
Mystic, magical, within,
Slumbering in her blissful breast
In daimoniac delitescence;
Till with fervour too intense
They would quicken and condense
And kindle into visible presence
And vitality specific,
Glowing on the too imprest
Keen sense in Shapes, appalling, grand
Grotesque or graceful—Phantoms haunting
And to human beauty moulding,
For quick-fancied Faith's beholding,
(Till all Earth was holy ground)
All the still-eyed Soul that broods

277

In wide wind-whispering solitudes—
Each cloudchase chequering sea and land—
Moon-shadows—sunny silences—
Lone mists on fire in glens profound—
Old half-lit trunks of twisted trees—
And stealthy gleams in gloomy woods;—
In those old days what dearer dreaming
Than the Vision such deep feeling,
Instantaneously revealing
Traits of rare resemblance, fashioned
Out of things so diverse-seeming,
Ocean-foam and Love impassioned,—
As it flashed in pictured splendour
On the fine Ephesian brain?—
Will devotion true and tender
Ever at that shrine be wanting?
Ever poet's heart refrain
From a chance to touch again
That wan sweet faith and form enchanting—
Sweetest myth of all the train?
Of all the mystic Shapes and mighty,
Sovran, while Love's passionate pain
Can the senses charm and chain,—
That dream divine of Aphrodite
Freshly risen from the main?

Lo! upon the amber sands,
Brilliant throbbing Apparition—
As if poised in air she stands!
Proudly conscious, frankly smiling,
Sure of homage, love, submission;
Mostly triumph—some surprise,
In the dangerous innocent eyes,

278

Where, what witchery world-beguiling
Lies in childlike archness hid!
Where the sense grows faint to mark
How the purple depths that glow
Like the velvet-petalled pansy, show
Dark—almost too lovely-dark—
Too like a stain almost,—amid
All that gleam of snowy brightness,
All her form's effulgent whiteness!
While the dazzling flood of tresses
Ripples like gold lines of light
In a hanging waterfall,
When you look from the curved rock-wall
Behind it, through its crystal pall;
Wavy sunbeams whence she presses
With those rosy-tipped fair fingers
Every diamond-drop that lingers
Lovingly in their bright recesses.

So was seen the Foam-born standing—
So for ever standeth she
In enamoured memory—
Darling Anadyomene!
While the leopard-sleek and fawning Sea
Round her plays caressingly,
Plays in many a broad festoon
Of foam-flowers—many a sliding sheet
Lovely-creaming, long-expanding,
Then dying off in a luxurious swoon;—
As if Poseidon love-beguiled,
To beguile, attract, adore her,
Ere he stood confest before her,
Mocked the playful gambols mild

279

Of some creature of the wild;
And one sweet look to deserve,
But one look so killing-sweet,
Kept the simple wile repeating,
Stealing swiftly, curve on curve,
Bounding forward and retreating,
Cowering, crouching at her feet!

II.

Like and unlike—such counterpart
And contrast to that deathless dream of Art,
As gay glad Sunrise when it breaks
In splendour-smitten mist and sparkling dew,
To all the deep-impurpled tenderness
Of soft-illumined Sunset makes,
Though both impress
Their varying glories on the self-same view:
So like and so unlike—the Vision bright
That wrapt our Wanderer now in wondering wild delight.

There, as the shy white crane, so rarely seen,
Stands proudly gentle and reserved,
Erect, but with her neck back-curved
Her breast's light-waving snow to preen—
There Amohia stood. Although downcast the rays
Of her clear-shining eyes—and on her cheek
The rosy flushings momently that broke
Through the clear olive, some distress bespoke—
Yet grandly winning and queenly-meek,
Erect the Maiden stood. About her all

280

Her affluent hair, unstirred by any breeze
Fell sheltering—a sable silky pall.
How like a strong ebullient swarm
Of hive-o'erflowing honey-bees
Forth issuing black and glad a hundred ways,
Still soaking wet and dripping yet,
The tendrilled tresses spread and ran and clung,
Moulding dark gloss on many a balanced charm;
And sinuously streaming
Adown her polished shoulder palely gleaming,
And rippling ebon-soft over her rounded arm,
A natural drapery hung.

O lovingly the Moonlight's sheeny whiteness
On that unmoving figure slept!
Here sweetly swelling into sudden brightness
That through rich waves of jetty tracery beamed;
There lost, as into sudden mellow shade
Caressingly they curled and crept!
Bewilderingly beautiful that chequering made
The graces of a Form wherein it seemed
A bounding spirit of young elastic Life essayed
In conscious exultation
To float and flow and wind and wander
And on itself return in many a coy meander
And subtle undulation:
And yet—as all perfection blends
Harmonious opposites for happiest ends—
Seemed ever in its wild luxuriance chained
And by a stronger spirit of proud reserve restrained,
Upholding the fine form in wingèd lightness;
As ivory serpents, held in graceful bond
Would twine of old about a silver Hermes-wand.

281

III.

So Amohia stood—nor longer sported;
Quite serious now, perhaps a little trembling;
Yet, though her bosom's quickened rise
And fall betrayed the anxious breathing,
By clear unconscious innocence supported,
And that sweet might of Nature when it knows
Few laws conventional that teach dissembling;
So that true Love in loving act o'erflows
As truly, artlessly, in loveliest guise,
As from the bud's moss-browned and tender sheathing,
When Spring has swollen its crumpled tissues
And filled them with its genial influence, issues
That crimson apparition—the young rose.

“Stranger—from far realms that lie
Beyond the steep slope of the sky,
Hapless Amohia, see,
Chieftain's daughter though she be,
Gives her love, her life to thee.
Amohia throws aside
Rank and chieftainship and pride;
For the lonely Stranger's sake
Every tie has dared to break;
Dared desert, with him to roam,
Father, Mother, friends and home;
All the Atuas' wrath to brave,
But to be the Stranger's slave.—
Take her—teach her—till she be
Worthy thy great race and thee!”

282

“Dearest—loveliest—bravest Maid,
Your true love shall be well repaid!
But whence, and how, my grand Wildflower,
Came you—and thus—at such an hour?”

“I swam the Lake—was almost gone—
Reached land and hither stole alone.”

IV.

Surprise a moment held him dumb;
And why set down the words he spoke—
Disjoined and crowded as the sum
Of mingled feelings that within him woke?—
What speech has Passion's mastering moods? what speech
Is possible to any Ecstasy?
Can finite words an infinite feeling reach,
Or the mere bounded Intellect express
The Soul's emotions in their boundlessness?
No! as the sky-drawn moisture that distils
Down from the sky-aspiring hills,
A sea-side valley slowly fills;
But, if some milder earthquake's pant
Have slightly changed its downward slant,
Suddenly bursts the marsh below
And seaward rushes in mad overflow,
Bearing before it to the mighty Main
The wrecked and flowery richness of the plain,
Till all the calm eternal blue,
About the outlet of the river new,

283

Is strewn with floating fragments—little isles
Where still the clinging flax-flower smiles,
Minute azolla-stains of ruddiest hue,
And many a water-loving bloom that grew
Luxuriant while the swamp its moisture could sustain:—
So Speech and all the forms of Thought,
Yea, every medium Intellect supplies,
Are shattered and distraught,
Whene'er the o'er-informing Soul doth rise
And swell and sweep in native might
On to its kindred Infinite;
And broken words and images essay
In vain the abounding current to convey,
In vain to express the inexpressible;
While blissful moans and happy murmurs tell,—
And only they,—
How the Eternal that within us sleeps,
Stirred to its inmost mystic deeps,
Is welling forth its own imperial way;
Bursting the crust where Custom's weeds are growing,
And its material marge triumphantly o'erflowing!

V.

What wonder therefore if our youth's emotion,
With no coherent flow of phrases fair,
Could answer that devotion?
If, while beneath the showering night
Of gleaming hair, dark eyes all light
Burned on him—speaking speechless tendernesses,
He could but answer, warm and wild,

284

With many a fervent deep ejaculation
Of pity, love and admiration;
With broken words and tones endearing,
Soothing, comforting and cheering;
And the soul-converse was sustained
With the only eloquence of passionate caresses,
Kissed eyes and lips, and fluttering breath and fondled tresses,
And throbbing hearts together strained:
Till with his cloak around her thrown
He led her to his dwelling lone;
By all the law the land supplied
So wedded and so made his bride:
And as they went in rapturous tone
Loving and low, half murmured and half sung
A playful tender ditty in her native tongue:

“Praise her—bless her—O caress her! lavish glorious gifts upon her;
Piles of woven wealth to dress her—glossy-rippling robes of honour!
O our Pride, the peerless, single,—many-vassaled Chiefs' descendant,—
Flax o' the finest, silky-tasselled—breadth o'er breadth of costly chequer,
Choicest broideries shall bedeck her! all to grace that form divinest,
And its buoyant blithe uprightness, and its lithe and sinuous lightness,
Rapture-fraught for souls supinest,—proudly, peerlessly array.—

285

Range for birds of beauteous feather, marsh and mountain, dell and dingle;
Stock-doves on whose necks resplendent rich reflections melt and mingle;
Black Sultana-birds blue-breasted as deep Ocean in blue weather;
Cuckoos, many a shy Sea-comer with its green dusk-golden glimmer,
Lackey of the golden Summer, Sun-attendant;—and scarce dimmer
Than that wanderer alien-nested, paraquitos crimson-crested,
Like Spring's emerald verdure vested;—parrots dyed like dying day.—
Weave their downy hues together—weave, relieve each tint transcendent;
And the mantle bride-beseeming, fair as fairy gifts in dreaming,
Round her shoulders shapely showing, wrap it fondly—fold the flowing
Feathery softness, beaming, glowing, with the rainbow's radiance gay.—
From her rounded neck dependent—where it curves so proud and stately,
Where her buoyant bosom heaves in tranquil triumph how sedately,
Precious trinkets, famous, greatly-storied from old days or lately,
Lucid as transparent leaves in sunshine, shall their green display.—
For her tresses—massy-streaming—floods of glittering gloom and brightness—

286

Black as pine-trunks burnt and gleaming, charred and sunlit boles and bosses!
Heron-plumes of snowy whiteness—down of sea-pure albatrosses—
Like foam-flakes on torrents raving through swart chasms night-encaving—
O'er those ebon wavelets waving,—shall the Chieftainess betray.—
Then caress her—praise her—bless her; load her with delight and honour;
Let no evil thing distress her; lavish all your love upon her!”