I.

A King—a God—a little Child
Your happy Lover is; a Saint
With all the Eternal Powers at one-
Serene—confiding—reconciled:
He thinks no ill—believes in none;
There is for him no sin, no taint,
No room for doubt, disgust, complaint,
Misgiving or despondence faint:
Life's mystery flies, her secret won,
Like morning frost before the sun;
How should its cobweb tics arrest
The triumph of his bounding breast!
How should he feel, with actual heaven
In measureless fruition given,
The mounting spirit's mortal load?
Feel, steeped in empyrean day
And rapture without stint bestowed,
The Mind too big for its abode,
The Soul's discomfort in its clay?
Why look to some seraphic sphere
For light, for love, so lavish here?
In this our gorgeous Paradise
Why bend to grief—why stoop to vice—
page 251 Ah why distrest and sorrow-prest—
Why not be right and brave and blest?
How easy, in a world so bright
To be, to live, blest, brave and right!—
He breathes Elysium—walks on wings;
His own unbounded bliss he flings
O'er all deformed, unhappy things:
Transfigured are they—glorified;
Or vanish and cannot abide
The flood of splendor, the full tide
Of joy that from his heart so wide
Wells over all the world beside.
O Melodist unequalled—Pride
Of Nature's self-taught songsters he!
Inspired—unconscious—mute too soon—
Who sets and sings his lyric Life-song free
To glad Creation's high triumphant time!

So for herself and most for her beloved
All anxious cares and fears removed,
So upon Amohia now, unclouded beams—
In rounded fulness of possession streams
Once more, the dream of dreams—
The dear divine delirium! say
Once to all by fate allowed;
Though from its shy crescent small,
That finest silver eyelash, fall
Only its earliest rising ray—
Clothing them ever with a luminous cloud
Wherein they may a sweet while stray,
In the thronging whisper-play
Of Angel-wings, on life's highway,
Monomaniacs, in the charge
page 252 Of Beauty—blissfully at large
'Mid the sadly saner crowd.

—But we pause—we pale before it,
Fairest reader—that soft splendor!
And your pardon we implore it,
If in sight of scene so tender
Heart and voice we haply harden.
And with faltering step pass o'er it,
That sequestered Eden-garden;
Painting in evasive fashion
Two young lovers, wildly loving,
Through a lovely region roving,
Free as Nature—free as birds are,
Free as infants' thoughts and words are!
Ah! too rich for our rude treating,
Too exalted for our story
That intense absorbing passion—
That fine fever of young Love;
Which though cheating, swiftly fleeting,
Oft it seem to mock and flout us,
Comes, so innocent, undesigning,
Comes into our darkness shining,
Come? and wraps the mystic glory
Of the golden Heavens about us!
And though pining or declining,
Buried—pent here—without vent here—
Lone—a stranger, wild, erratic;
Soon returning to the burning
Blisses of its home above—
Leaves a bud elsewhere to blossom,
Leaves a light in every bosom;—
Just revealing ere off-stealing,
page 253 One brief glimpse of soul-enjoyment,
To endure a memory sure—
Pure—a secret life-refiner
And great lure to realms diviner,
Where abandonment ecstatic
To the infinite of feeling—
Loftier love than aught existent,
Ever by indulgence growing
Deeper, fonder, and more glowing—
Tide at flooding still new flowing,
Flower fresh-budding while full-blowing—
Is consistent—is persistent,
Is our normal, true employment I

II.

Amo and Ranolf slowly journeying home,
Had to a pleasant place for camping come
Inside a glorious forest; and although
The atmosphere was still aglow
With heat—the Sun still shining high,
Resolved that day they would no further go:
Why should they haste—what seek or fly?
Each rocky niche or woody nook
Of most retired romantic look,
There they could make their home, their rest,
And choose next day as fair a nest:—'
Twas such a joy to journey so,
How could their journey be too slow!
So long as not compelled to sever,
They cared not should it last for ever.
The youth, with hands beneath his head,
Against a great titóki's base,
page 254 Where, less compact and tangled, spread
The underbrush a little space,
Lay watching, now the forest scene,
Now Amo, as with accents gay
And lovely looks and lively mien,
Directions to the lad she gave
How best and where the stones to lay
When heated well—and neatly pave
The little hollow cleared away
To make his oven in, and cook—
In leaves close-folded, lightly sprinkled
With water from the fretting brook
O'er rocky bed that near them tinkled—
The savory palm-tree's pithy heart,
By Ranolf just cut down—but not,
Be sure, without a little smart—
(Though many grew about the spot)
Some slight compunction, for a meal
To strike with his destructive steel,
A thing so fair, a woodland treasure
You could not look at without pleasure;
A slim smooth pillar, ribbed and round,
With drooping crimson chaplet crowned;
O'er that, erect, symmetric, chaste,
A green Creek vase of perfect taste,
Smooth-shining, sinuous; whence in pride
Of beauty issued, spreading wide,
A fan-like tuft of feathers free—
All in artistic harmony!
Nor this alone employed the lad;
Intent upon a forest feast,
A more attractive task he had—
page 255 To raise and fix his three forked sticks,
The little iron pot to sling
He would on that excursion bring:
Its use, of all the white man's ways
Had won his most decided praise;
In Ranolfs service he at least
Had learnt what pleasant things were made
With its inestimable aid;
And now with ducks and pigeons shot
By Ranolf, he designed a stew,
Should all his former stews outdo,
Since he had shared a traveller's lot.

III.

But watching thus the wood, or these,
As Ranolf lay, his facile eye
Ran o'er the shapes of plants and trees
Exuberant round him, known or new;
And while once more, as oft before,
He marked with pleasure deep and true,
What varied charms in form and hue
Dear Nature's forest-children wore,
It so did chance his curious glance
Fell on a slender shrub hard by,
All trace-work of transparent gold,
Or gold and emerald blended—neither,
Yet far more beautiful than either!
Against a ground of shadow, black
And soft as velvet, at its back—
So delicately pencilled in green splendor,
Stem branch and twig and leaflet tender
So saturate with sunshine, such a Mood
Of light—the exquisite creation stood!—
page 256 Then out at once at that sweet sight,
Outbroke in words his pure delight
And admiration uncontrolled:

"O the ineffable loveliness
Of ihe green works of God!—how strange
Their perfect power to mock each one some dress
Our many-masquing Spirits wear;
Mute, yet expert, like Music, to express
In forms as it in sounds what mood soe'er
The Soul may take through feeling's varied range!
Look at that star-crowned beauty how she stoops,
With what meek pride her plumy crest is bent!
Sec that fair wanton's figure forward leant
With open arms and every spreading spray
In trustful, loving, frank abandoment;
What shrinking tenderness does one display,
Another languidly despondent droops!
Here, some advanced in bold defiance stand,
While others crouch in shy reserve behind:
There innocent grace, or full contentment bland,
Or swelling pomp their fit exponents find:
And see! how that dismantled forest-king
Does his contorted silver branches fling.
All bare to heaven, in wild despair,
Or writhing agony of speechless prayer!
Surely some Spirit kindred to our own
Must lurk within these woodland shapes, unknown
Since every image they excite in us,
With feelings so like ours is coupled thus;
Why Soul's effects on forms should they so well
Exhibit, if no Soul within them dwell?—
But O their rich luxuriance! what a load
page 257 That sturdy giant lifts in air!
His mighty arms are strong and broad,
But all with alien growths are furred,
A shaggy hide of creepers rare;
Their forks are all blocked up and blurred
With tufts of clogging parasites
That crowd till not a spot left bare
Might offer footing for a bird!—
And such her boundless vigour, see.
Above, below, and everywhere,
Exulting Nature so delights,
So riots in profusion, she
Twice over does her work for glee!
A tangled intricacy first she weaves,
Under and upper growth of bush and tree
In rampant wrestle for ascendancy;
Then round it all a richer overflow
Of reckless vegetation flings,
That here, close-moulding on the shrubs below
A matted coat of delicate leaves,
Mantles the muffled life whereon it clings
Into a solid mass of greenery;
There, mounting to the tree-tops, down again
Comes wildly wantoning in a perfect rain
Of trailers—self-encircling living strings
Unravellable! see how all about
The hundred-stranded creeper-cordage swings!
And when the breeze, so loud without,
Now tamed and awe-struck, gliding in, has found
Amid the stately trees a stealthy way—
How gently to-and-fro just o'er the ground
The low-depending woody ringlets sway,
Like panting creatures on the watch for play!"

IV.

3.

"I am Tanë the Tree-God.
What will you bring to me?
Fruits of all kinds will I take
So ripe, true fruits they be!
Melting pulp—juicy flake
Sweet kernel or bitter
None are better—none fitter—
All are grateful to me.
But your shell with no lining
Though splendidly shining;
But your husk with a varnish
That nought seems to tarnish—
If any of these I espy,
Empty and hard and dry,
That serve but for clamour and clatter
Or the genuine fruit to belie;
These cheats will I shiver and shatter
And their fragments scornfully scatter,
0 none of them bring to me!

page 263

• "Pains and passions—deeds and duties—virtues, vices—gifts and graces
• Have not all, (heir value, uses—in their various fitting places—
• So they be not false pretences, mocking masks for natural faces?-

"There, my sweet one, that is what,
Were I Tanë (which, thank God, I'm not,
Seeing mine's a happier lot)
That is about what I should say,
Had I my own, my wondrous way."

V.

And Amo coming to his side amused,
Her smiling eyes with tender love suffused,
"How fond, O Rano mine," said she,
"Of these dumb things you seem to be;
I shall be jealous soon, I think,
And wish myself a Tree! "

"A tree, my Amo! but I wonder which?
0 which so fair that we might link
Such loveliness in fancy with its form?
Which should he haven for a heart so warm,
So sweet a Spirit's dwelling-place?
The Rata-myrtle for its bloom so rich—
Or Tree-fern for its perfect grace?
Its slender stem I would embrace
How fondly!—nay, but that would never do—
That limbless tree-fern never should be you
With nothing but a stem and plumy crest!
Ah no! the glorious Rata-tree were best,
With blooming arms that spread around—above;
page 264 That should be you, my sole delight,
My darling bliss! that so I might
Embosomed in embowering beauty rest,
And nestle in the branches of my love!"

"Nay—but I would not be," said Amo—" I,
That Rata—if the change I had to try;
Rather the snowy Clematis, to twine
About the tree I loved; or rather yet
That creeper Fern, with little roots so fine
Along its running cords, it seems to get
For its gay leaves with golden spots beset,
Its dearest nurture from the bark whereto
It clings so close; as if its life it drew,
Drew all its loving life from that alone—
As I from thee, Ranoro, all my own!"
She paused a tender moment—then resumed:
"Nay, not the Rata! howsoe'er it bloomed,
Paling the crimson sunset; for you know,
Its twining arms and shoots together grow
Around the trunk it clasps, conjoining slow
Till they become consolidate, and show
An ever-thickening sheath that kills at last
The helpless tree round which it clings so fast
Rather, 0 how much rather than destroy
The thing I loved, the source of all my joy,
Would I, my Rano, share the piteous fate
The Rata's poor companion must await—
Were you the clasper, I the tree that died,
That you might flourish in full strength and pride!"

"Nay—nay—my Amo! were't to be my doom
To clasp you till you perished in your bloom,
page 265 Neither to misery should be left behind—
Together would we be to death consigned—
In death, as all through life, in love entwined.
But now, my lovely Clematis, be gay!—
Though never shall I see that Rata bright,
In murderous fondness, fastening round its prey
The serpent-folds that hug the friend they slay,
Without a sigh for the poor victim's plight;
Without a wish to cut and cleave away
The monster throttling what has been his stay;
Without some wonder why the Power divine
Includes such pictures in his world's design,
And even in lovely vegetable life
Leaves startling models of unnatural strife."

VI.

Thus they two in their dream. But Evening now
Steals, like a serious thought o'er joyous face,
Its cooling veil o'er the warm Earth to throw.
The hawk no longer soars in pride of place,
Stiff-wheeling with bent head in circles slow;
The teal and wild-duck leave the floating weed
And open pool, for sheltering rush and reed;
And home with outstretched necks the cormorants fly
In strings—each train dark-lettering the sky,
Now V exact, now lengthening into Y—
As arrow-like direct their course they steer
To haunts afar, unseen, but somewhere near
Those mountain-summits carpeted and black
With forests dense without a break or track,
Whence smooth and ferny spurs in golden dun
Of solemn sunlight undulating run
page 266 Down to dim bases lost in shadows blue
That blot the intervening gullies too—
Encroaching darkness creeping upward still
O'er chequered black-and-gold of dell and hill.

"How pleasant is the life those birds must lead—
About the sea all flay to sport and feed,
Where'er they will, with little heed;
And flee away at night with aim so sure
Striking across the sky, so eager each
His inaccessible far roost to reach—
So secret, solitary and secure
In solitude. And is not ours like theirs—
As free, as lonely sweet, as void of cares!"
Said Ranolf, as beside him closer drew
Fair Amo: "Yes, my wild-wood dove,
What have we else to do but live and love!"—
And she, her native tongue, no doubt, too weak
The fond delight that filled her heart to speak,
Replied in one more rich, she felt, though new,
That foreign language of a fervid kiss;
Shaping her smiling lips as if they might
Unleamedly perform the mystic rite,
Some feature of its due observance miss.
"But see," she hints, "Te Maim comes to say
The kúkupas^* are done he takes such pride
In cooking."—As she spoke the youngster gay
Came running up and grinning cried:
"Ranoro, come! come, Amo, quickly—do!
Ka rawe! 'tis a glorious stew!"