III

And thus o'er many a mountain wood-entangled,
And stony plain of stunted fern that hides
The bright-green oily anise; and hill-sides
And valleys, where its dense luxuriance balks
With inter clinging fronds and tough red stalks
The traveller's hard-fought path—they took their way.
Sometimes they traversed, half the dreary day,
A deep-glenned wilderness all dark and dank i
With trees, whence tattered and dishevelled dangled
Pale streaming strips of mosses long and lank;
Where at each second step of tedious toil
On perfect forms of fallen trunks they tread,
And ankle-deep sink in their yielding bed—
Moss-covered rottenness long turned to soil:—
Until, ascending ever in the drear
Dumb gloom forlorn, a sudden rushing sound
Of pattering rain strikes freshly on the ear—
Tis but the breeze that up so high has found
Amid the rattling leaves a free career!
To the soft, mighty, sea-like roar they list:—
page 230 Or else 'tis calm; the gloom itself is gone;
And all is airiness and light-filled mist,
As on the open mountain-side, so lone
And lofty, freely breathing they emerge.
And sometimes through a league-long swamp they urgi
Slow progress, dragging through foot-sucking slush
Their weary limbs, red-painted to the knees
In pap rust-stained by iron or seeding rush;
But soon through limpid brilliant streams that travel
With murmuring, momentary-gleaming foam
That flits and flashes over sun-warmed gravel
They wade, and laughing wash that unctuous loam
Off blood-stained limbs now clean beyond all cavil
And start refreshed new road-knots to unravel.
And what delight, at length, that glimpse instils,
That wedge-shaped opening in the wooded hills,
Which, like a cup, the far-off Ocean fills!—
Anon they skirt the winding wild sea-shore;
From woody crag or ferny bluff admiring
The dim-bright beautiful blue bloom it wore—
That still Immensity—that placid Ocean—
With all its thousand leagues of level calm,
Tremendously serene; he, fancying more
Than feeling, for tired Spirits peace-desiring,
With the world-fret and life's low fever sore—
Weary and worn with turmoil and emotion—
The soothing might of its majestic balm.
Or to the beach descending, with joined hands
They pace the firm tide-saturated sands
Whitening beneath their foot press as they pass;
And from that fresh and tender marble floor
So glossy-shining in the morning sun,
Watch the broad billows at their chase untiring—
page 231 How they come rolling on, in rougher weather—
How in long lines they swell and link together,
Till, as their watery walls they grandly lift,
Their level crests extending sideways, swift
Shoot over into headlong roofs of glass
Cylindric—thundering as they curl and run
And dose, down-rushing to a weltering dance
Of foam that slides along the smooth expanse,
Nor seldom, in a streaked and creamy sheet
Comes unexpected hissing round their feet,
While with great leaps and hurry-skurry fleet,
His louder laughter mixed with her's so sweet,
Each tries to stop the other's quick retreat
Or else on sands that, white and loose, give way
At every step, they toil; till labor-sped
Their limbs in the noon-loneliness they lay
On that hot, soft, yet unelastic bed,
With brittle seaweed, pink and black o'erstrewn,
And wrecks of many a forest-growth upthrown,
Bare stem and barkless branches, clean, sea-bleached,
Milk-white—or stringy logs deep-red as wine,
Their ends ground smooth against a thousand rocks,
Dead-heavy, soaked with penetrating brine;
Or bolted fragment of some Ship storm-breached
And shattered—all with barnacles o'ergrown,
Grey-crusted thick with hollow-coned small shells—
So silent in the sunshine still and lone,
So reticent of what it sadly tells;
Which Ranolf then imagines till he shocks
Quick-sympathising Amo with a tale
Of brave men lost, and haply lovers gone
For ever—never heard of nor forgot;
And so beguiles the bright one of her tears,
page 232 Which, while he kisses the wet cheek so pale
He charms away, and the sweet mourner cheers,
Hinting the contrast of their happier lot:
Then turns to livelier sights the scene supplied;
And near some river-mouth—shoal—marshy-wide—
Would mark the swarming sea-birds o'er the waste
Tremble across the air in glimmering flocks;
Or how, long-legged with little steps they plied
Their yellow webs, in such high-shouldered haste
Pattering along the cockle-filled sandbanks,
Some refuse dainty of the Sea to taste;
Or standing stupefied in huddled ranks
Still rounded up by the advancing tide—
White glittering squadrons on the level mud
Dressing their lines before the enclosing flood;
Or what strange instinct guided them so well,
Posed by their mollusk, up in air to start,
And soaring, on the rocks let fall the shell
Whose stubborn valves they could not force apart.
And once, hard by a gloomy forest-side,
How Amo clapped her hands in pure delight
At Ranolf s puzzled wonder when he spied
What seemed so surely—for 'twas clear in sight—
Some furry three-legged thing without a head,
Fixed to the ground—a tripod!—how amazed
Was he to find when serpent-like it raised
Long neck and bill, and swiftly running fled, '
Twas nothing but that wing-less, tail-less bird
Boring for worms—less feathered too than furred—
The kiwi—strange brown-speckled would-be beast,
Which the pair hunted half the day at least,
While needful look-out young Te Manu kept
Or else the lovers, tired or cautious, stepped
page 233 From the chalk-bouldered, pumice-crumbling strand
On to black broken-edged o'erlapping land,
And o'er the flax-swamped rushy level then
Betook themselves to some Inviting wood
Just at the black-green opening of a glen
Where mighty trunks like shadowy columns stood,
Solemn, expectant—promising so meet
A shelter for their day or night retreat;
Shore-loving vine-trees, púriri, they were
The enormous mounds that with such swelling state
Arose—in masses so consolidate
And caked, the light-green foliage, here and there,
Seemed cracking only from its very weight.

How free—how free it was! nothing it seemed,
Between themselves and God! so Ranolf felt;
That world of Man, how oft it seemed to melt
Wholly away! his Soul in contact brought
With Nature's nakedness, exulting teemed
With raptures Life refined had never bought;
Proud vigor from her vivid touches caught;
And from the exhilarating hale embrace
Drew hardier, wilder will to set at nought
All risks—and dauntless every danger face!—
Yet little this was needed now—although
Amo could not her anxious fears forego;
For dread of all that Priest might prompt destroyed
Half of the pleasure she bad else enjoyed