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Ranolf and Amohia

II

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;
And slowly he discerns, those eyes betwixt,
Features gigantic—furious—in amaze;
Wild brows up branching 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.
page 144 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 rafter 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 ot chief;
But to his fancy now the crowd appeared
A Gorgon-eyed and grinning demonry
Whose fiendish rancour his misfortune jeered.

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
page 145 He scarce could doubt, although the thought might strike
His cooler mind, so unprovoked a wrong
Pone 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 'Wailing 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 them—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,
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 the great All-giver would invest—
page 146 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 oceans' shore—
His soul with new existence; though to dust
This apparition of mere clay should fall,
Its present phantasm. What, '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
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.