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Ranolf and Amohia

Canto the Twelfth

page 190

Canto the Twelfth.

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;
Till Tareha was with Ranolf left alone,
Who at a legend a1l his tribe outshone:—
Of many, this was one he told his guest:

1.

  • Mutara's fame filled all the land; what foeman but would fear
  • The crashing of his battle-brand—the whirlwind of his spear!page 191
  • 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.

* Reinga—place of departed Spirits.

3.

  • One eve Mutara chafing strode along the Ocean shore,
  • While flew the Tempest all abroad—for Peace his heartstrings tore:
  • Blood-tinged with Sunset struggling through black Storm-clouds branching free,
  • Came roaring in with splashing dm, 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;
  • 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.page 192
  • "Oh, could you take," he muttered deep, "here, now, a human from,
  • 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!"

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.
page 193

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:—

* Pronounced "Mowee."

II.

"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
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 stir in their 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,
page 194 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 splendor 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;
No, if he were unconquered, all conquests were vain.

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 foe-men 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 vigor, endowed with new birth—
Wight 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
page 195 His limbs in the glory and gladness of youth
]n 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?—"
"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;
And lo 1 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 java seas
And forests of upshootiug 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!
page 196 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
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
page 197 Your story—Let us hear how Maui found
Down to those life-springs his adventurous way! "

"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:
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, Hinë-Nui-te-Po,
Perceived her inviolate regions below
page 198 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!"

"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:
So these 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,
page 199 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 half-crazed Founder-Prince,
(If e'er the tenet was his own,
Not Kásyapa, his friend's alone)
Was forced in self-despite to teach,
A million ages' high persistence
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."

III.

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—
page 200 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,
And to the spring beneath the hill
Set off his calabash to fill.

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;
Stand but a yard, she ne'er were seen.
Into the copse she quickly slipped,
Three steps from where tin; 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,
page 201 That intertwined with its harmonious plash,
The hidden Girl began to sing
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,

O 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
page 202 A little now, he seemed to gain
Some heart to list the simple strain;
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,
page 203 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."

—This was a song, in fact, by Ranolf made,
And turned to Maori to assay
page 204 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;
Or in what spirit penetrate
Up to the airhung crevices of snow,
Or thicket-stilled gorges, dense, profound,
Where those divinest Wellsprings may abound.—
page 205 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.