Arthur Henry Adams: Verses about Time

Along the lamp-lit streets they glide and go:
Here Nature in her brutishness is nude:
See, thinly trickling from the age-old wound,
The steady stream of squandered womanhood!

A NEW land, like a stainless flower set
In the green foliage of the waving sea;
Or like a maiden whose fair heart is free,
Whose honest eyes with no sad tears are wet,
Whose bosom has no passion to forget,
But thrills and lifts exuberant, as she
Voices some sudden-flooding melody!
A land of strength, life, vigour, youth—and yet
An old land, grey as I, her child, am grey;
Filled with the whispers of old thoughts that stir
And wake, like shadows of the past that play
Deep in the beauty of a child's grave eyes,
And show beneath life's gladness glancing there
The pathos of a hundred histories.

LAST night I saw the Pleiades again,
Faint as a drift of steam
From some tall chimney-stack;
And I remembered you as you were then:
Awoke dead worlds of dream,
And Time turned slowly back.

I saw the Pleiades through branches bare,
And close to mine your face
Soft glowing in the dark;
For Youth and Hope and Love and You were there
At our dear trysting-place
In that bleak London park.

And as we kissed the Pleiades looked down
From their immeasurable
Aloofness in cold Space.
Do you remember how a last leaf brown
Between us flickering fell
Soft on your upturned face?

Last night I saw the Pleiades again,
Here in the alien South,
Where no leaves fade at all;
And I remembered you as you were then,
And felt upon my mouth
Your leaf-light kisses fall!

The Pleiades remember and look down
On me made old with grief,
Who then a young god stood,
When you—now lost and trampled by the Town,
A lone wind-driven leaf,—
Were young and sweet and good!

BENEATH this narrow jostling street,
Unruffled by the noise of feet,
Like a slow organ-note I hear
The pulses of the great world beat.

Unseen beneath the city’s show
Through this aorta ever flow
The currents of the universe—
A thousand pulses throbbing low!

Unheard beneath the pavement’s din
Unknown magicians sit within
Dim caves, and weave life into words
On patient looms that spin and spin.

There, uninspired, yet with the dower
Of mightier mechanic power,
Some bent, obscure Euripides
Builds the loud drama of the hour!

There, from the gaping presses hurled,
A thousand voices, passion-whirled,
With throats of steel vociferate
The incessant story of the world!

So through this artery from age
To age the tides of passion rage,
The swift historians of each day
Flinging a world upon a page!

And then I pause and gaze my fill
Where cataracts of traffic spill
Their foam into the Circus. Lo!
Look up, the crown on Ludgate Hill!

Remote from all the city’s moods,
In high, untroubled solitudes,
Like an old Buddha swathed in dream,
St. Paul’s above the city broods!

ONCE more this Autumn-earth is ripe,
Parturient of another type.

While with the Past old nations merge
His foot is on the Future’s verge.

They watch him, as they huddle, pent,
Striding a spacious continent,

Above the level desert’s marge
Looming in his aloofness large.

No flower with fragile sweetness graced—
A lank weed wrestling with the waste;

Pallid of face and gaunt of limb,
The sweetness withered out of him;

Sombre, indomitable, wan,
The juices dried, the glad youth gone.

A little weary from his birth,
His laugh the spectre of a mirth,

Bitter beneath a bitter sky,
To Nature he has no reply.

Wanton, perhaps, and cruel. Yes,
Is not his sun more merciless?

So drab and neutral is his day,
He finds a splendour in the grey,

And from his life’s monotony
He draws a dreary melody.

When earth so poor a banquet makes
His pleasures at a gulp he takes;

The feast is his to the last crumb:
Drink while he can…the drought will come.

His heart a sudden tropic flower,
He loves and loathes within an hour.

Yet you who by the pools abide,
Judge not the man who swerves aside;

He sees beyond your hazy fears;
He roads the desert of the years;

Rearing his cities in the sand,
He builds where even God has banned;

With green a continent he crowns,
And stars a wilderness with towns;

With paths the distances he snares;
His gyves of steel the great plain wears.

A child who takes a world for toy,
To build a nation or destroy,

His childish features frozen stern,
His manhood’s task he has to learn—

From feeble tribes to federate
One white and peace-encompassed State.

But if there be no goal to reach?…
The track lies open, dawns beseech!

Enough that he lay down his load
A little farther on the road.

So, toward undreamt-of destinies
He slouches down the centuries.

They lie unwatched, in waste and vacant places,
In sombre bush or wind-swept tussock spaces,
Where seldom human tread
And never human trace is—
The dwellings of our dead!
No insolence of stone is o'er them builded;
By mockery of monuments unshielded,
Far on the unfenced plain
Forgotten graves have yielded
Earth to free earth again.
Above their crypts no air with incense reeling,
No chant of choir or sob of organ pealing;
But ever over them
The evening breezes kneeling
Whisper a requiem.
For some the margeless plain where no one passes,
Save when at morning far in misty masses
The drifting flock appears.
Lo, here the greener grasses
Glint like a stain of tears!

For some the quiet bush, shade-strewn and saddened,
Whereo'er the herald tui, morning-gladdened,
Lone on his chosen tree,
With his new rapture maddened,
Shouts incoherently.
For some the gully where, in whispers tender,
The flax-blades mourn and murmur, and the slender
White ranks of toi go,
With drooping plumes of splendour,
In pageantry of woe.
For some the common trench where, not all fameless,
They fighting fell who thought to tame the tameless,
And won their barren crown;
Where one grave holds them nameless—
Brave white and braver brown.
But in their sleep, like troubled children turning,
A dream of mother-country in them burning,
They whisper their despair,
And one vague, voiceless yearning
Burdens the pausing air …

“ Unchanging here the drab year onward presses;
No Spring comes trysting here with new-loosed tresses ,
And never may the years
Win Autumn's sweet caresses —
Her leaves that fall like tears .
And we would lie 'neath old-remembered beeches ,
Where we could hear the voice of him who preaches
And the deep organ's call ,
While close about us reaches
The cool, grey, lichened wall .”
But they are ours, and jealously we hold them;
Within our children's ranks we have enrolled them,
And till all Time shall cease
Our brooding bush shall fold them
In her broad-bosomed peace.
They came as lovers come, all else forsaking,
The bonds of home and kindred proudly breaking;
They lie in splendour lone—
The nation of their making
Their everlasting throne!

When Allenby's Army smashed the Turk
Who was the bloke who did all the work
The Aussie knows and he'll tell you straight
That most of the job was done by his mate
The wonderful Aussie Waler
It was umpty-nine in the shade each day
And the wells were spoiled in the Turkish way
But with nothing to eat and plenty to do
The heart of the Waler carried him through
The wonderful, wonderful Waler

For ten long weeks through the desert hot
He plugged along and all that he got
Was a drink, or not a drink a day
But did the stamina once give way
Of the wonderful Aussie Waler?
Was he the one to desert his mate?
Just watch him coming up the straight
With twenty stone of harness and man
No wonder the Turk was an also ran
With the wonderful, wonderful Waler

When drinks were not and feeds were few
There still was his harness that he could chew
With a nibble or two at another's mane
He plucked up heart to march again
The wonderful Aussie Waler
And when everything edible seemed to be stale
A hair or two from a neighbour's tail
Makes a pleasant meal and there's no doubt
They took it turn and turn about
The wonderful, wonderful Waler

A great Australian through and through
There's a good time coming old horse for you
There's a paddock green with grass to your knees
And there you shall roll at your lordly ease
My wonderful Aussie Waler
With a gallop or two to keep you fit
And won't it bring back the thrill of it!
There 're no more hardships and little work
For the cobber who broke the heathen Turk
My wonderful, wonderful Waler

But what is that the orders tell?
This mate of mine they're going to sell
To the old home paddock you'll never come back
They are selling you as a local's hack
My wonderful, wonderful Waler
The times together that we've been through
When all that I had in the world was you
Out there! Out there in a world of men
You were more than wife or sweetheart then
My wonderful, wonderful Waler

There was trust and mateship in your eyes
A horse has no soul - All lies I All lies!
And more than a kiss or soft eyes that speak
Was your muzzling nose against my cheek
You wonderful Aussie Waler
A life long slavery is your fate
Not while a mate can still shoot straight
Your eyes - I need a steady hand -
Good bye old chap - you understand
You wonderful, wonderful Waler.

A PAIR of lovers in the street!
I dare not mock: with reverence meet
My unforgetting heart I cheat.

Ah, God, spare me—so soon again
At the barred door to beat in vain,
And find their dalliance such fierce pain!

I, yearning up from Hell’s abyss,
See, dreaming through their worlds of bliss,
This Dante and his Beatrice!

For these the distant goal have won
For which God made the plasm and sun;
His patient labouring is done.

For these each Spring has been a bride,
And lonely worlds were spawned and died.
Chaos for them in birth-throes cried.

Far out in seas of Space forlorn
This crescent wave was slowly born
That thunders on the beach of morn.

Ah, they, so soon to be meshed in
The web of splendour, silken-thin,
The nebulae were set to spin!

Up the long path from joy to joy
Love led the way. Can aught destroy
The task that was the stars’ employ?

Their ecstasy to God is more
Than Lucifer at Heaven’s door
Entreating pardon for his war.

These two are gods, for, by love swayed,
They have God’s special task essayed,
And new worlds for their gladness made.

This little hour so lightly given
Makes earth too mean a place to live in,
And broken toys His Hell and Heaven.

All Time, expectant of their bliss,
Hangs fearful. Space through her abyss
Shudders if they this hour should miss.

For if their kiss they went without,
The stars would be a raining rout,
And time in anguish flicker out.

About God’s room from star to sun
A stealthy slippered Thing would run,
Quenching cold tapers one by one.

But they have kissed. Eternity,
Like a great clock, beats steadily
For these mazed fools—but not for me!

Of God’s wide universe the strands
They hold within their clinging hands;
The stars march on at their commands.

So from this moment blossom free
New universes tirelessly—
Aeons of unguessed ecstasy!

But I can only bow and beat
Vain hands about God’s mercy-seat,
And, still remembering, still entreat.

Surely my penance is complete!
The rack turns grimly when I meet
A pair of lovers on the street

To You.
SO you have come at last!
And we nestle, each in each,
As leans the pliant sea in the clean-curved limbs of her lover the beach;
Merged in each other quite,
Clinging, as in the tresses of trees dallies the troubadour night;
Faint as a perfume, soft as wine,
Yielding as moonlight—mine, all mine—
So I have found you at last!
I dreamed; we dare not meet:
The time is yet too soon;
Swept with the tumult of perfect love, our souls from this life would swoon—
For the fusion of our lives
Is the sole great goal to which the vast creation vaguely drives;
And only when I kiss your face
Shall the last great trumpet shatter Space—
I dreamed; we dare not meet!
Yet somewhere, hungry-eyed,
You lie and listen with tears,
Clogged with the flesh, and dulled with the sodden heritage of the years.
And I am alien, lone,

Hedged with the palisades of self, shut in—a soul unknown.
You, fashioned for me from Time's first day,
I, moulded for you ere that dawn was grey,
Wait hidden, hungry-eyed!
I lie in the lonely night;
And you?—perhaps so near
That if I should whisper your sweet soul-name you would joyously leap and hear!
And yet perhaps so far,
Drowned in the cosmic mist beyond the swirl of the farthest star;
But over the universe yawning between,
With wistful eyes you listen and lean,
Alone in the lonely night!
Perhaps your thirsty arms
Some stranger youth entwine,
And you will yield him thin, faint kisses, thinking his lips are mine;
He thinking that unawares
He has caught, as once in a dream he caught, that miracle-glance of hers.
The pathos of the thing that seems!
Each clasping memories, kissing dreams.
In passionate-thirsty arms!

So you will yearn through life,
Or maybe you did not wait:
You married him, and his neutral smile you learnt to sullenly hate;
Or you have lived a lie,
And drank the mockery of his lips, believing that he was I.
You dreamed, content that you loved him true,
But the soul of your soul was dead to you—
So I must yearn through life!
Or, starving and passionate still,
To your dreams you were bravely true;
You told the Night your secrets drear, and he laughed back at you;
And even when you dreamed
You heard his merciless laughter ring, and you sprang awake and screamed;
Till Age kissed you with a kiss that sears,
And you faded and withered with the years,
Starving and passionate still!
But, hush! I had almost heard:
Last night I dreamed your name;
Like the soft, white tread of a faint, cool cloud to my desolate sky it came;
Like a moth it drifted away,

And into the flame of the dawn it fluttered, dying into the day.
Yet the wind in the whispering leaves
The moan of your sobbing weaves—
Hush! I had almost heard.
Yet I should know your face!
As mine, all mine, I claim
That coil of hair that over your bosom smoulders— a yellow flame;
And the cool, dim-curtained eyes,
The crescent of your imperious chin, and the little moist mouth that cries.
I have heard through the din of the years
Your voice, with its tincture of tears—
Yes, I remember your face!
Once in the drifting crowd
I thought I had found a clue—
A pale face pealed like an organ-note, and yet— oh! my heart—not you!
She had your look, the same
Ineffable sorrow of glad young eyes; but all the rest was shame.
Perhaps she saw—for her eyes were wet—
In me the soul she had one time met
In eternity's drifting crowd!

Perhaps 't is the desert of years
That severs each from each,
And out of the cavernous centuries to each other we blindly reach.
You blossomed so long ago
That only the Dawn and the Spring remember, and little, so little, they know!
You wait on the hill of the first white morn,
Straining dead eyes to me, unborn,
Across the desert of years.
Or when I am dead at last,
And my sovereignty have won,
As merged in the dust of the gradual Past, unliving, I live on,
You will rise with some far-off Spring,
And back to the drear, dead days that were mine your piteous glance will fling.
But, hush! I shall come in the rain-kissed night
And whisper the words of our marriage-rite—
So I shall find you at last!
Yet if we met.…
I dreamed; we dare not meet.

THE dawn hangs heavy on the distant hill,
The darkness shudders slowly into light;
And from the weary bosom of the night
The pent winds sigh, then sink with horror still.
Naked and grey, the guillotine stands square
Upon the hill, while from its base the crowd
Surges out far, and waits, to silence cowed,
Impatient for the thing to happen there.
Listen! The bells within the tower toll
Five naked notes; and down within his cell
The prisoner hears and mutters, “It is well,”
Though like that other knife each cuts his soul.
His sick nerves from the probing echoes shrink,
“This is the end,” he says; “let me be strong;
Let me be brave till then—‘t is not for long:
I must not think of it—I must not think!”
See, through the courtyard, guarded, comes the slight
Thin figure of the anarchist. Amazed,
He sees the thousand faces swiftly raised—
The billows of the crowd break into white!
One narrow, alien glance below, and then
The scene fades dimly from his film-glazed eyes;
And shuddering he sees his past arise—
The cycle of his life begins again.

And as misshapen memories crowd fast
Upon him, jostling in a sudden strife,
Athwart the dull, drab level of his life
Stand sharply out the blood-stains of his past:
His youth, before he knew he had it, lost;
His father's body by an accident
'Neath the rich man's remorseless mill-wheels pent—
A corpse; and sister, mother, brother tossed
Out to the mercy of the merciless.
His mother stricken next; her humble niche
Was needed by the reckless and the rich,
And death was easier than life's loneliness.
His sister, she had fortune in her face,
And won it, too, till Vice's fingers tore
The freshness from her figure, and no more
In idleness she flaunted her disgrace.
He lost her, stifled in the world's wide smother,
For years; till one night on the street they met.
She seized him—he can feel that hot thrill yet!—
She spoke him—knowing not he was her brother!
Wrong reeking of the rich incessantly!
Oppression and oppression o'er again!
Till from the smouldering hate within his brain
Mad fever fired the fuse of Anarchy.

Then plot and cunning, weak, futile and mean,
The maddened one against the many; thus
He strove to strangle Order's octopus—
And gained the goal at last—the guillotine!
It waits him grim and grey; he sees it not,
Nor hears the rising murmur ripple out
To the crowd's edge, and, turning, die in doubt.
The vague, uncertain future threatens—what?
So…shall he speak, fling out his last reply
Why waste the time in trivialities?
One throbbing thought now holds him; and there is
No room for sign or speech—he has to die.
Only a murmur wavers up and shakes
The sullen air, then hesitates and dies;
And the grim hush of horror stifled lies,
Suspended like a billow ere it breaks.
One bitter prayer, half-curse, he mutters when
The knife hangs high above, and the world waits.
But ere it swoops an age it hesitates:
The word is given, breaths are drawn, and then…
With eyes and soul close shut—be swift, relief!—
The prisoner waits the end that does not come.
For hark! that heavy, low, tumultuous hum
That surges, surges till it shouts “ Reprieve! ”

“ Reprieved and pardoned! ” All his senses swim
In a rose-mist! As Sleep's soft hand that soothes
The terse, strained limbs of fevered Day and smoothes
Life's knotted nerves—so comes relief to him.
And when he woke again his soul, set free,
Had wandered far, within a moment's space,
And seen the sadness of God's silent face—
The mighty calm of immortality.
How like a triumph his home-coming! Then
The glorious news that met him, how that Right
Had routed Wrong, for ever faction's fight
Was finished, and the world was one again.
Then swiftly through his swimming, mist-dimmed eyes
He sees the good and great upright again;
And Reason rings the knell of grief and pain;
The gladdened new world lapped in sunlight lies.
Long life was his with honour. On Fame's breath
His name was borne, until in perfect peace—
Glad like a mellow fruit to fall and cease—
His long life ripened richly into death.
Yet none knew this but he . The crowd still waits;
Shoots swift the lightning of the knife, and loud
Roars the hoarse thunder from the sated crowd
And justice has been done. God compensates.

BLUE, the wreaths of smoke, like drooping banners
From the flaming battlements of sunset
Hung suspended; and within his whare
Hipe, last of Ngatiraukawa's chieftains,
Lay a-dying! Ringed about his death-bed,
Like a palisade of carven figures,
Stood the silent people of the village—
Warriors and women of his hapu—
Waiting. Then a sudden spilth of sunlight
Splashed upon the mountain-peak above them,
And it blossomed redly like a rata.
With his people and the twilight pausing;
Withering to death in regal patience,
Taciturn and grim, lay Hipe dying.
Shuddering and green, a little lizard
Made a ripple through the whare's darkness,
Writhing close to Hipe! Then a whisper
On the women's dry lips hesitated
As the ring of figures fluttered backwards;
“ 'T is the Spirit-Thing that comes to carry
Hipe's tardy soul across the waters
To the world of stars!” And Hipe, grimly,
Felt its hungry eyes a-glitter on him;
Then he knew the spirit-world had called him;
Knew the lizard-messenger must hasten,
And would carry back a soul for answer.

Twenty days in silence he had listened,
Dumb with thoughts of death, and sorely troubled
For his tribe left leaderless and lonely.
Now like sullen thunder from the blackness
Of the whare swept a voice untinctured
With a stain of sickness; and the women,
Breaking backwards, shrieked in sudden terror,
“ 'T is the weird Thing's voice, the greenish lizard,
All-impatient for the soul of Hipe!”
But the warriors in the shadow straightened
Drooping shoulders, gripped their greenstone meres,
And the rhythmic tumult of the war-dance
Swept the great pah with its throbbing thunder:
While their glad throats chanted, “E, 't is Hipe!
Hipe's voice that led us in the battle;
Hipe, young, come back to lead us ever!”
“Warriors and women of my hapu,”
Whirled the voice of Hipe from the darkness,
“I have had communion with the spirits;
Listen while I chant the song they taught me!
“I have seen the coming end of all things,
Seen the Maori shattered 'neath the onrush
Of the white-faced strangers. Like the flashing
Of the Sun-God through the ranks of darkness,
Like the Fire-God rippling through the forest,
Like the winter's silent blight of snowflakes—
Lo, the strange outbreak of pallid blossoms!—

Sweeps this surging wave of stranger-faces,
Frothing irresistibly upon us.
“Lo, the Pakeha shall come and conquer;
We have failed; the Gods are angry with us.
See, the withered autumn of our greatness!
“Old ancestral myths and sacred legends
That we deemed immortal—(priest and wizard
Died, and yet their stories, like a river,
Through the long years ran on, ever changeless!)—
Shall be buried; and the names long given
To each hill, and stream, and path and gully,
Shall be like a yesterday forgotten,
Blown like trembling froth before the sea-breeze.
“And the gods that people all our islands—
This great sea of presences immortal,
Living, real, alert for charm or evil,
Hurrying in every breeze, and haunting,
Heavy-winged, the vistas of the forest,
Deluging the daylight with their presence,
Teeming, flooding, brimming in the shadows—
Shall be banished to their spirit-regions,
And the world be lorn of gods and lonely.
“And the Maori shall no long time linger
Ere, a tardy exile, he shall journey
To the under-world. Yet he shall never
Break before this influx, but shall fight on

Till, a mangled thing, the tide o'erwhelm him.
And my tribe, the mighty Ngatiraukawa,
Had they left one worthy chieftain only
Who could lead my people on to victory,
Who could follow where my feet have trodden,
Might yet rear their name into a pillar
Carved with fame, until their stubborn story
From the mists of legend broke tremendous.
Flaming through the chilly years to follow
With a sunset-splendour, huge, heroic!
“Yes, the time is yours to rear a nation
From one conquering tribe, the Ngatiraukawa;
But my pah is leaderless and lonely;
I am left, the last of Maori chieftains;
And the gods have called me now to lead them
In their mighty battles! There is no one
Worthy now to wield my dying mana!”
So he ceased, and tremulous the silence
Sighed to voice in one long wail of sorrow.
So; it was the truth that Hipe taught them:
None was left to lead them on to victory;
None could follow where his feet had trodden.
Then by name old Hipe called the chieftains—
Weakling sons of that gaunt wrinkled giant,
Stunted saplings blanching in the shadow
Of the old tree's overarching greatness.
One by one he called them, and they shivered,

For they knew no answer to his question,
“Can you lead my people on to victory?
Can you follow where my feet have trodden?”
One by one a great hope burned within them,
And their feeble hearts beat fast and proudly;
One by one a chill of terror took them,
And the challenge on their lips was frozen.
Then the old chief in his anger chaunted
Frenziedly a song of scorn of all things,
And the frightened people of the village—
Warriors and women of his hapu—
Quavered into murmurs 'neath the whirlwind
Of his lashing words; and then he fretted
Into gusts of anger; and the lizard
Made a greenish ripple in the darkness,
Shuddering closer to him. And the people
Bending heard a whisper pass above them,
“Is there none to lead you on to victory,
None to follow where my feet have trodden?”
Lo, a sudden rumour from the edges
Of the silent concourse, where the humblest
Of the village crouched in utter baseness—
There among the outcasts one leapt upright,
Clean-limbed, straight and comely as a sunbeam.
Eager muscles clad in tawny velvet,
Eyes aflash with prescience of his power,
Yet a boy, untried in warriors' warfare,

Virgin to the battle! And untroubled
Rang a daring voice across the darkness,
“Yes, my people, one there is to lead you;
I dare point you on to fame and victory,
I dare tread where Hipe's feet have trodden.
Yea,” and prouder sang the voice above them,
“I can promise mightier fame unending;
I shall lead where Hipe dared not tempt you;
I shall make new footprints through the future—
I, the youth Te Rauparaha, have spoken!”
On the boy who braved them stormed the people,
Swept with fear and anger, and they clamoured,
“Who so proudly speaks, though not a chieftain?
Rank and name and fame he has none; how then
Dare he lead when sons of chieftains falter?”
But the boy leapt forward to the whare,
Clean-limbed, straight and comely as a sunbeam,
Eager muscles clad in tawny velvet,
Eyes aflash with prescience of his power,
Swinging high the mere he had fashioned
Out of wood, and carven like a chieftain's—
Aye, and with the toy had slain a foeman!
Flinging fiery speech out like a hailstorm,
“If ye choose me chieftain I shall lead you
Down to meet the white one on the sea-coast,
Where his hordes shall break like scattered billows
From our wall of meres. Him o'erwhelming,

I shall wrest his flaming weapons from him,
Fortify for pah the rugged island
Kapiti; then like a black-hawk swooping
I shall whirl upon the Southern Island,
Sweep it with my name as with a tempest,
Overrun it like the play of sunlight,
Sigh across it like a flame, till Terror
Runs before me shrieking! And our pathway
Shall be sullen red with flames and bloodshed,
And shall moan with massacre and battle!
“Quenching every foe, beneath my mana
Tribe shall stand with tribe, till all my nation
Like a harsh impassive wall of forest
Imperturbably shall front the strangers;
And with frown inscrutable shall wither
All this buzz and stir of stinging insects
That persist about us; then our islands
Garlanded with peace are ours for ever!
“Then the name of me, Te Rauparaha,
And the tribe I lead, the Ngatitoa,
Shall be shrined in sacred myth and legend
With the glamour of our oft-told prowess
Wreathed about them! Think, we shall be saviours
Of a race, a nation! And this island
We have sown so thick with names—each hillock,
Glen and gully, stream and tribal limit—
Shall for ever blossom like a garden

With the liquid softness of their music!
And the flute shall still across the evening
Lilt and waver, brimming with love's yearning!
And the exiled gods and banished spirits
Shall steal back to people all our islands
With their sea of presences immortal,
Living, real, alert for charm or evil,
Hurrying in every breeze and haunting,
Heavy-winged, the vistas of the forest,
Deluging the daylight with their presence,
Teeming, flooding, brimming in the shadows,
Till the world, a tawny world of gladness,
Shall no more of gods be lorn and lonely!
I, the youth Te Rauparaha, have spoken!”
Hipe heard, and, dying, cried in triumph,
“Warriors and women of my hapu,
He shall lead you, he, Te Rauparaha!
He shall do the things that he has promised.
He may fail; but think how grand his failure!
He alone can lift against the tempest
That proud head of his, and hugely daring,
God-like, hugely fail, or hugely conquer!”
Still he spoke, but suddenly the lizard
Made a greenish ripple through the darkness,
And was gone! Upon the long lone journey
To Te Reinga and the world of spirits
It had started with the soul of Hipe!

Then the plaintive wailing of the women
Quavered through the darkness, and a shudder
Took the slaves that in a horror waited
For the mercy of the blow to send them—
Ah! the sombre, slowly-stepping phalanx—
To the twilight world with Hipe's spirit.