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Ranolf and Amohia

Canto the Fifth

page 88

Canto the Fifth.

I.

A fine old sturdy stalwart stubborn Chief
Was Tangi-Moana, the "Wailing Sea":
Both brave and wise in his degree.
In Council calm, no wordy 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 rock-like 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
Far o'er the azure hyaline—
page 89 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;
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.

page 90

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 ghouilike 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

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.
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,
page 91 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 Atna,* 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
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 I give up all our good old ways—-the charms
And ceremonies practised all our lives

* Atua—God ur Spirit.

page 92 To make our Men all warriors, brave in amis,
Our Women skilful, chaste, industrious wives—
Give up our wars—war-dances-—iauas *—taboo,
Whence all our wealth, and power, and fame accrue,
For these new notions I 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—bin 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
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,

* Taua—a war expedition.

page 93 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 out breaking
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.

III.

Such was this Tangi—such "The Wailing Sea;"
 Of form almost gigantic he—
Bull-necked, square jawed, firm-lipped, bold-eyed, broad-browed,
His looks proclaimed his character aloud:
And when he stood forth in full height and pride
In flowing vest of silky flax, undyed,
But crimson-spotted with round knobs of wool,
Black points of cord, alternate, hanging free;
And o'er it, down to the brown ancles 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 crest
page 94 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?

IV.

A thunderstorm was sweeping o'er the Like,
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 skiey plains;
Or if the tumult for a moment stopped
You he aid the torrent rain how loud it hissed.
As if a hecatomb of bulls at least
Were broiling for some sacrificial feast;
And all about the liquid lightnings dropped
In points like grap estones 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;
page 95 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—A vaunt!
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 blood shot 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.

V.

But soon the light Canoe they saw
Come bounding o'er the breaking wave;
There sate, while mixed delight and awe
Beamed from her face, 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.
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
page 96 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.

VI.

And now the youth announced how he
To Rotorua's Chief of high degree
From Tapuae by Taupo's Lake, his home,
A messenger of great sad news was come:
How he by chance upon the other side
Had Amohia's bark 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 hex matchless bloom
Had been betrothed and "tapu" It befel
page 97 In this wise. Sometime since, continuous rain
Softening a mountain, it had slipped amain
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.

VII

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!—"
page 98 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!"
page 99 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, flashing through the wave/
Forward—forward all together,
All in guest qf foemen's slaughter,
They had deft the foamy water
Seeking vengeance for the brave
For the brave—the brave—the brave! "

VIII.

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

page 100

IX.

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 labor 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 stronghold 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,
More terrible than dungeons, gibbets, chains,
Material penance, penalties or pains
page 101 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 Chiefs 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 terrors might be turned
To means their own dominion to increase;
Unseen executors of their caprice,
Agents impalpable upheld their cause;
The world of Spirits was their dumb Police,
And Ghosts enforced their lightest Laws.

page 102

X.

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 way side 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
Abstracted still and unobservant seemed j
But those who dared to watch him long would mark
How those dim eyes would on a sudden shift
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
page 103 All they would wish to bide or he to 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.

But Kangapo had reason to bewail;
For had he not a hundred times foretold
That should those Western Tribes his tribe assail,
Those famed Waikato, foemen from of old,
Stout Tangi in the contest should prevail?
And whence derived he confidence to make
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?
page 104 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 King fish 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.

XI.

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
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.
page 105 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 feint 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.

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:
page 106 Could nothing, think yon, 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 feint hollow voices seemed to say;
Now like the night wind through the crannied roof
In long drawn whistling whisper sighing bye,
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.