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Ranolf and Amohia

Canto the Ninth

page 158

Canto the Ninth.

I.

1.

"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.

2.

"Oh for some cavern unespied
Where to 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 the ancient lay
Sad Amohia 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
page 159 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:
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 lingers 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?

II.

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.
page 160 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,
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 then 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.

III.

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
page 161 The purple gray of shadow upward creeping;
All the flushed sunset sobered into boding awe;—
When Miroa, coursing quick from side to side,
Tossing to any one she saw
A merry word her aim to hide—
With careful shew of carelessness—
Her anxious flutter anxious to repress—
Her object to seem objectless—
Came like a quivering flitter mouse,
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 dispatched
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;
page 162 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?

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.

As through the land when some dread Earthquake thrills.
Shaking the hidden bases of the hills;
Their grating adamantine depths, beneath
The ponderous, unimaginable strain and stress,
Groan shuddering as in pangs of worldwide death;
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;
page 163 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 God 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
And dire compulsion spurning her control!
All feelings that had been her life-long stay
Seemed from their deep foundations wrenched away;
No more could her convulsed, afflicted breast,
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,

page 164

IV.

'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 lift 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:
Not 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—
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)
page 165 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!—
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 life
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;
page 166 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!

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
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.