I.
"How beautiful! how wonderful! how strange!"

Such words, less thought than mere emotion, well
Might Ranolf with abated breath, in tone
That wonder-stricken to a whisper fell,
For Amo's looks of triumph now exchange:
So fair a vision charmed our loiterers lone,
As at the closing of a sultry day,
In search of some good camping-ground
They paddled, up Mahána's Lake,
A small canoe by chance they found
(And Amo settled they might take)
With little care half-hid in sedge
Flax-fastened to the water's edge—
Its owners clearly far away.

From the low sky-line of the hilly range
Before them, sweeping down its dark-green face
Into the lake that slumbered at its base,
A mighty Cataract—so it seemed
Over a hundred steps of marble streamed
page 268 And gushed, or fell in dripping overflow—
Flat steps, in flights half-circled—row o'er row,
Irregularly mingling side by side;
They and the torrent-curtain wide,
All rosy-hued, it seemed, with sunset's glow.—
—But what is this!—no roar, no sound,
Disturbs that torrent's hush profound!
The wanderers near and nearer come—
Still is the mighty Cataract dumb!
A thousand fairy lights may shimmer
With tender sheen, with glossy glimmer,
O'er curve advanced and salient edge
Of many a luminous water-ledge;
A thousand slanting shadows pale
May fling their thin transparent veil
O'er deep recess and shallow dent
In many a watery stair's descent:
Yet, mellow-bright, or mildly dim,
Both lights and shades—both dent and rim—
Each wavy streak, each warm snow-tress—
Stand rigid, mute and motionless!
No faintest murmur—not a sound—
Relieves that Cataract's hush profound;
No tiniest bubble, not a flake
Of floating foam is seen to break
The smoothness where it meets the Lake:
Along that shining surface move
No ripples; not the slightest swell
Rolls o'er the mirror darkly green,
Where, every feature limned so well—
Pale, silent, and serene as death—
The cataract's image hangs beneath
The cataract—but not more serene,
page 269 More phantom-silent than is seen
The white rose-hued reality above.

They paddle past—for on the right
Another Cataract conies in sight;
Another broader, grander flight
Of steps—all stainless, snowy-bright!
They land—their curious way they track
Near thickets made by contrast black;
And then that wonder seems to be
A Cataract carved in Parian stone,
Or any purer substance known—
Agate or milk-chalcedony!
Its showering snow-cascades appear
Long ranges bright of stalactite,
And sparry frets and fringes white,
Thick-falling, plenteous, tier o'er tier;
Its crowding stairs, in bold ascent
Piled up that silvery-glimmering height,
Are layers, they know—accretions stow
Of hard silicious sediment:
For as they gain a rugged road,
And cautious climb the solid rime,
Each step becomes a terrace broad—
Each terrace a wide basin brimmed
With water, brilliant, yet in hue
The tenderest delicate harebell-blue
Deepening to violet! Slowly climb
The twain, and turn from time to time
To mark the hundred baths in view-
Crystalline azure, snowy-rimmed—
The marge of every beauteous pond
Curve after curve—each lower beyond
page 270 The higher—outs weeping white and wide.
Like snowy lines of foam that glide
O'er level sea sands lightly skimmed
By thin sheets of the glistening tide.
They climb those milk-white fiats incrusted
And netted o'er with wavy ropes
Of wrinkled silica. At last-
Each basin's heat increasing fast—
The topmost step the pair surmount,
And lo, the cause of all! Around,
The circling cliffs a crater bound—
Cliffs damp with dark-green rnoss—their slopes
All crimson-stained with blots and streaks—
White-mottled and vermilion-rusted;
And in the midst, beneath a cloud
That ever upward rolls and reeks
And hides the sky with its dim shroud,
Look where up shoots a fuming fount—
Up through a blue and boiling pool
Perennial—a great sapphire steaming,
In that coralline crater gleaming.
Upwelling ever, amethystal,
Ebullient comes the bubbling crystal!
Still growing cooler and more cool
As down the porcelain stairway slips
The fluid flint, and slowly drips,
And hangs each basin's curling lips
With crusted fringe each year increases,
Thicker than shear-forgotten fleeces;
More close and regular than rows,
Long rows of snowy trumpet-flowers
Some day to hang in garden-bowers,
When strangers shall these wilds enclose.
page 271 But see! in all that lively spread
Of blue and white and vermeil red,
How dark with growths of greenest gloss,
Just at the edge of that first ledge,
A little rocky islet peeps
Into the crater-caldron's deeps.
Along the ledge they lightly cross,
And from that place of vantage gaze
O'er all the scene—and every phase
The current takes as down it strays:
They note where'er, by step or stair,
By brimming bath, on hollow reef
Or hoary plain, its magic rain
Can reach a branch, a flower, a leaf—
The branching spray, leaf, blossom gay,
Are blanched and stiffened into stone!
So round about lurks tracery strewn
Of daintiest-moulded porcelain-ware,
Or coral wreaths and clusters rare,
A white flint-foliage!—rather say
Such fairy-work as frost alone
Were equal to, could it o'erlay
With tender crust of crystals fair,—
Fine spikes so delicately piled—
Not wintry trees, leafstripped and bare,
But summer's vegetation, rich and wild.

II.

But while all this they watch, lo, still and grand,
The enormous Moon!—how, like
A great gold cymbal on its edge upright,
Upon the mountain's ridge it takes its stand
page 272 So close—there balanced broad and steady,
To bathe in dreamily-magical light
What seemed a magical dream already,
Twice beautify the beautiful, and strike
Transcended sense dead-mute with admiration!—
And who could mark, with wondering soul-elation,
That revel of redundant loveliness,
Nor some such truth as Ranolf felt confess;

"O these charms of great Nature! who ever has seen them
In their glory as these are, nor owned that the notion
They force on the thinker, is true, not illusive—
That our senses and they, so composed as between them
To awake in the mind such delightful emotion,
Are proofs self-attested, as logic conclusive,
Of Benevolence somewhere, in what has created
And keeps them to act and react on each other:
A sentiment this, that no Science can smother.
Nor condemn it as anthro pomorphical folly—
Since a cause they must have, one intelligent wholly—
To hold that the Cause of these marvels must mean them
To display that Benevolence—mutely reveal it
In delight to the creature most fitted to feel it!
—Aye truly! and though by stem reasoning's parity
You maintain that in Nature, the baleful, disgusting
Should be proof in its Cause of defect of such charity—
That if Beauty be vaunted as sign of Benevolence,
Deformity equally argues Malevolence,—
Yet the first so outs plendours the last—so exceeds it—
And the last has such uses, Mankind almost needs it—
'Tis hard not to side with the hopeful and trusting!
Yes, cavil and carp, the nice balance adjusting,
page 273 Yet is Beauty in literal truth, nothing less
Than a Gospel—-an embassy mute yet express
From some Power imperial, of friendliness felt
For mankind—say of Love! one that never will cease
To diffuse its serene revelations of peace;
Bright dawns and rich sunsets its eloquent books;
And the broad laugh of flowers, and the soft-chiming brook's
Secret murmurs of joy, and the rapture of birds,
Its angelical whispers,—accredited words:
But holiest Woman's affectionate looks,
Most thrillingly potent to move and to melt,
Are the pages where clearest its plenary power
Of divine Inspiration for ever has dwelt!
And he who has basked but one bliss-giving hour
In their sunshine and solace, like me must avow,
With the loveliest lessons of Love, it is thou
O God-ordained Beauty, the Spirit canst fill!
Aye, 'tis Thou, in all shapes, of celestial good-will,
Art the sweetest, most suasive Evangelist still! "—

III.

Content that night no more to see,
The wanderers push off merrily
To what that night their home shall be:
A little rugged isle (another
Beside it standing, its twin-brother
In conformation strange) that lifts
Its verdurous tufts o'er tortuous rifts
Misshapen—many a dip and rent
In rock that—ever bathed, besprent
With oozy hot spring, fervid play
Of steam that finds a viewless vent—
Is softening slow to pallid clay.
page 274 By isles—mere knots of waving grass,
By thin-spread rush and reed they pass;
And fright a thousand birds that rise
From bubbling channel, heated marsh;
And flee in flocks away, with cries
Now plaintive, wild—now hoarse and harsh;
Coot, teal and that rich gallinule
Of velvet violet plumage proud;
That, night and day, each open pool
Or warm and watery covert crowd,
And stalk and strut and peer and pry
With jerking tail and searching eye;
Or plash and paddle, duck and dive,
And through green bills quick-gargling drive
The scooped-up Lake's clear lymph. And see,
Pink-legged, snow-white or sable-pied,
Those strangers from far Ocean's side;
Slim oyster-catcher, avocet,
And tripping beach-birds, seldom met
Elsewhere—come hither, not for food,
But on this warm delight to brood,
This tepid inland luxury.

The pair have left the light canoe
And cross the soil with cautious tread,
Whose treacherous crust they scarce can trust—
Each step, it seems, may break it through.
With springy swelling moss 'tis spread,
An emerald, warm, and soaking sod,
In places; then their way they track
Through little thickets, very black
In shade against the tumbled blocks—
The steaming, white and moonlit rocks—
page 275 But cherished there to richness rare
Of fragrant broom and ferny plume
And winding woven lychopod
Close-creeping—all luxuriant, lush,
In that pervading vapour-gush.
Then on a grassy spot the brake
Left free—just large enough to make
A couch for two, fenced all around
With aromatic leptosperm—
A soft green gapless wall—they heap
Elastic fern and broom to keep
Down to a pleasant warmth the heat
The ground gives out; where they may sleep—
Could Love desire a bower more sweet?—
Secure no noxious reptiles creep
Throughout the land—evenomed worm,
Or poison-snake you dread to meet;
And lulled by that low changeless churme,
The hissing, simmering, seething sound
That sings and murmurs all the while
Add ever round that mystic isle—
May sleep a blissful sleep profound,
Plunged in the calm unconscious heaven
To youth and health out-wearied given.

IV.

Soon as the Morn from curtain-folds of grey
Peeped out with smile so grave and tender.
Like a young Queen upon her crowning-day
Blushing to put on all that gold and splendour—
Up rose the lovers to survey
The marvels yet unseen that round them lay.
page 276 Baths beauteous, statelier than of old
Rome's silken Emperors ever planned,
Of every nice degree of heat and cold,
Are ready crystal-filled at hand:
No need have they of fuel or fire
To cook their morning meal to their desire;
"Tis but to scrape a primrose-tinted seam,
Some sulphur-crusted fissure dry
That runs through fern and grass hard by—
Up comes the hot and fizzing steam,
Wherein—or plunged in water boiling blue
The food suspended, is, without ado,
In style as wholesome quickly drest
As Savarin's choicest, Soyer's best.

V.

Forthwith their gladsome way they take
To all the marvels of the Lake.
To Wata-poho's endless wail
They list—the groans its tortures wrest
From its hard agonising breast,
So hollow, inward-deep and fierce,
As upward shoot its showers intense,
Cramming the narrow shaft they pierce
Through shuddering rocks blanched ashy-pale;
Hot water, steam and sulphur-smoke
Commingling in one column dense
Of white terrific turbulence!
But other gentler feelings woke
Its sister fountain welling ni'gh,
Whose bursts of grief for moments brief
Long-intervailed, in streams out-broke,
And then would sink away and die
page 277 With such soft moan relapsing slow—
Such long-drawn breath of utter woe—
It well became its mournful name,
'Kó-ingo—Love's desponding Sigh.'
They visit then that narrow glen,
Where at the foot of hills forlorn,
Silicious slabs of spar flood borne,
Like cakes of ice when Spring is young,
Burst up by freshets wild, are flung:
And slow they pick their cautious way
By liquid beds of creamy clay,
Where large white nipples rise and sink,
And lazy bubbles break and fume,
Up to a small square tarn pea-green—
As green and bright as malachite,
Beneath a crimson cliff in part
White-mottled, and along the brink
Of that clear water's grass-hued sheen—
Where azure dragon-flies will dart
A moment—feathered rich and dark
With mánuka, like fragrant broom.
And near the valley's mouth they mark,
Where thickets dense scarce leave a track,
A boiling mud-pool sputtering black
And baleful;—mark, above its gloom
What weird wild shapes the rocks assume!
Here, worn by water's sapping might,
Time-crennelled turrets half o'erthrown;
There, idols blurred by ages' flight
To shapes of unconjectured stone;
Now on the hill's low brow upright,
Like men who walk in dreams by night,
Dumbfounded, tottering—lost and lone;
page 278 Now, muffled forms their faces shrouding
Opprest with some unheard-of doom;
Or woe-struck up the hillside crowding—
Funereal mourners round a tomb:—
Grotesque and ominous and grim,
As Dore's wonder-teeming whim
E'er forged and fixed in stony trance
Of subtle-shaped significance.

And next across the Lake they steer
To see that fair cascaded stair
That yester-eye they passed so near—
'The Fountain of the Clouded Sky,'
Tu-kápua-rangi—fitly styled,
It flings its steam so wide and high.
'Tis rosy rime they climb this time;
For floors and fringes, terrace piled
O'er terrace, glow with faint carmine
As fashioned of camelian fine;
As if, continuous, full, from heaven
Some wide white avalanche downward driven
With sanguine hues it still retained.
But at the topmost terrace—lo,
A vision like a lovely dream!—
A basin large, its further marge
And all its surface hid in steam
That thinly driving o'er it flies,
Spreads, level with the level plain
Of smoothest milk-white marble grain:
And all around its nearer brink
A border broad of delicate pink
That melts to lemon-yellow, dyes
page 279 That whiteness, and with even hues
Fair as a rainbow laid on snow,
Its wavy outline still pursues.
But through the driving vapour, see,
Translucent depths of azure, bright
And soft as heaven's divinest blue
A gulf profound of liquid light!
And from those depths, uprising through
That azure light—yet all beneath
The steaming surface—still as death,
In snowy mute solemnity,
A mighty forward-bending peak
Of" marble bows; shaped like a paw,
Say, some enormous polar bear's—
Thick-set with many a flattened claw,
All one way level-pointing—scale
O'er scale like th' Indian pangolin's mail—
All snowiest alabaster!—Weak,
Too weak, were any words to speak
The hushed mysterious charm it wears,
That ghostly-lovely miracle,
Whose sides of snow far down below
In boiling light that round them lies,
Fade where the clear cerulean glow
Of that unfathomed fervent well,
In tenderest turquoise dimness dies!
O well may Ranolf for a while
Enthusiast-like, sit rapt before
That heaven-blue gulf and rock snow-white,
Unconscious even of Amo's smile,
Unconscious of her joyous eyes,
And loving arms he scarce could feel
That softly would around him steal
page 280 As silent by his side she lay
On that pure speckless snowy floor
With pink and saffron purfle gay.

Thus all the varied fountains found
Among the ferny hills that bound
Mahana, and a mile around—
Of every flow and hue and sound
They visit;—tall columnar mound
And diamond-cone, and haycock heap
Of boiling snow, and springs that leap
And languish, spurting fitful spray,
And cloud-crowned stems of steam that spout
At seasons, or shoot up alway;
Hid white about this verdurous waste
Like statues in proud gardens placed:
And one large font whose hollow bed
With branching emerald coral spread,
Through brilliant boiling crystal shows,
Fine as the daintiest moss that grows!—
And sights as dread they meet throughout,
As wild Imagination's worst
Of black hell-broths and witches' bowls
Infernal—Dante-pits accurst,
Here realised in cankerous holes
And sloughs of mud as red as blood,
Pitch-black, or viscid yellow-drab,
Or pap of clay light-bluish gray.
Or sulphurous gruel thick and slab:
Each sputtering, hot, commixture dire,
Earth mineral-stuffed, and flood and fire.
Together pashed and pent-up make.
And fuse in sluggish fever nought can slake.
page 281 So passed the day; and swiftly sped
Mid scenes where marvels ever varying rise;
The wanderers' eyes with wonder ever fed—
Bright with continual flashes of surprise.

VI.

Late after noon it was, when tired the pair
Returning to their starting point, once more
Beside the mighty geyser stood
That flings a panting column high in air—
'Ohápu'—' Fountain of the dreadful Roar.'

Their fancy sated with the sight of fear,
They sate upon the hill above
That cauldron, in the shade of rocky wood
By bursting spring and boiling flood
Distorted—sate in lounging mood
In careless converse, to themselves how dear!
(Is any talk too trifling for true love?)
Where still the geysers' raging they could hear.

"This loitering through the land on foot,
Now slow, now faster, as may suit
One's humour best, I do enjoy
So thoroughly—did always from a boy!"—
Said Ranolf, as himself he threw
Upon the stunted fern—" Do you?"

"On foot!" said Amo, "how else could you go?
Though in your land, I've heard, indeed,
That travellers sometimes go at greater speed
In strangest style—I ne'er believed it, though."
page 282 "What did you hear, my Amo?"

"It was he
E Ruka, who had sailed beyond the sea;
But he so many monstrous stones told
With face so true, by young and old
'Kai-tito-nui' he was named,
'The big lie-swallower;' 'pumpkin-headed' too,
To take whate'er he heard for true—
They called him. I should be ashamed
His silly solemn stories to repeat."

"But let me hear about the travelling, sweet!"
"Well, promise not to laugh—at least, not laugh
Too much at me. 1 did not credit half
The story, mind. He said, your people use
To travel in, great land-canoes,
Dragged by enormous dogs as tall
As men, or taller; nay, more strange—
A thing that had to do with travel,
Though how, I couldI not quite unravel—
That beasts about your country range
To which the mighty Moas were small
Our songs make mention of; that these
Gigantic monsters, each and all
Have double heads and shoulders double,
Six legs or so; and therefore go
Swift as the wind; then without trouble
Can split in two whene'er they please,
And both the fragments when they sever,
Can run about as well as ever!—
page 283 Nay, now, but I will hold your lips—
You are not to laugh so—understand;
I will not take away my hand,
Kiss as you may my finger-tips."

The fact explained to her well nigh
As wondrous as the fiction seemed:
What 1 get astride those "beasts and fly!
'Twas like what Maui did or schemed,
Who fished the Isles up—almost hitched.
The Sun into his noose, and then.
Had freed the happy sons of men From
Night—Death—every denizen
Of Darkness—all the evil crew
Of powers bewitching or bewitched.

"My Child—but these are trifles to
The wondrous things our people do.—
"He pointed toward the place where bellowing, crashing,
That fierce terrific Hotspring raged;
With monstrous head in furious foam upsoaring,
And boiling billows round the crater dashing—
Its crusted soot-brown sides, like demons lashing;
Or if a moment from its maddest mood
The lapsing Geyser seemed to sink assuaged,
Mounting again amid the ceaseless roaring,
Like hissing Cobra with inflated hood
Upswelling swift—its reeking rush renewing,
With force and frenzy evermore accruing!

"You hear," he said, "that hell-pool dread:
What would you think if I should say
page 284 My people have the skill to yoke
The fiercest whirls of steam that ever broke
From that tremendous pit of wrath, and tether
As many moving houses gay
Behind it as would all your tribe contain;
Then make it whisk them o'er the plain,
Aye! all your Tribe at once together,
As smoothly, rapidly as flew
The Kingfisher the other day
With chestnut breast and back so blue
That round out heads came swooping, screaming,
Because we chanced to saunter near
The barkless twisted tree-trunk (gleaming
In sunshine silver-sharp and clear
Against far purple hills) that hid
The nest wherein his young ones lay?"

"Well, but if such a word you spoke
I could but think, I could but say,
'Twas my Ranoro's whim to joke;
And on her fond reliance play
Who takes and trusts his every word,
As if an Atua's voice she heard."

"Nay; pretty one! 'tis simple fact—
No silly jest, but truth exact."

"Well then, my Chief, my Master dear
Shall do as I, his handmaid, bid,
And let me all the wonder hear."

"Your language has no words, I fear—"
page 285 "Ah, we poor Maori 1 worthless still,
In deeds and words, no power, no skill!—
But tell me—that tremendous flying
Is it not something dreadful, frightful
Your people tremble at, while trying?"

"Not dreadful, dearest, but delightful—"
And then with her request complying,
"See—" he went on, as best he could, constraining
Strange words and strange ideas to fit—
Though all the interruptions we omit
Where foreign thought or phrase required explaining:—
"See! all in order ranged at hand
The moving houses ready stand;
Your tribe all ranged in order too,
Inside them sit—imagine how;
We take our places, I and you-—"
(" Yes—were I close to you as now!"—)
"Impatient frets the giant, Steam,—
You hear liis wild complaining scream;
You hear him hissing ere he Start
Like pinned-down Snake that strives to dart;
Then off at once! in perfect row
Swift as a lance your warriors throw,
Men, houses, all, away we go!—
Give place! give place! in silent race
The distant woods each other chase!
Trees, hedges, hamlets—far and wide,
They reel and spin, they shift and slide!
The dim horizon all alive—
Hills, plains and forests, how they drive!
Determined to keep up and see
They shoot ahead as fast as we;
page 286 But nearer objects, soon as spied,
Detach themselves and backward glide;
Behind us drifting one by one,
Wink past the others and are gone!
See! parallel field-furrows broad,
That lie right-angled to the road,
Like swiftly-turning wheel-spokes play—
Tum—open—float and flit away!
More speed—more speed! and shriller cries!
The panting road begins to rise,
And like a whirling grindstone flies!
The fields close by can scarce be seen,
A swift continuous stream of green!—
—But fix upon the scene around
A steadier glance—in how profound
A stillness seems that hamlet bound:
How solemn, in secluded meadows
Those oak trees standing on their shadows;
That church-tower wrapt in ivy-fleece,
How sacred its inviolate peace!
The riot of our wild career
Seems rushing through a land asleep
Where all things rapt—entranced, appear,
Or if they move, can only creep;
The lightest car, the heaviest wain—
(Those land-canoes, you know, we use)
And walking men whose figures plain
A moment on the eye remain,
Seem toiling backwards, all in vain!—
Then sudden—close—ere you can think,
The blackest blinding midnight seems
To make your very eyeballs shrink;
The air is dank—a hollow roar
page 287 And deeper, harsher than before
Is mingled with the Giant's screams,
As—all the houses in a row—
Right through a Mountain's heart we go!
But swiftly from the jaws of night
Emerging, screeching with delight,
Outcomes with unabated might
The Monster and pursues his fight!
In sable stream thick issuing flies
His furious breath across the skies:
Each laborer as the ponderous whirr,
The hammer-beats, incessant, strong
And fast as flap of flying bird,
The monster's eager pulse, are heard,
Suspends the busy fork or prong
And turns to look, but scarce can see
The phantom, ere the rush and stir,
Men, monster, long-linked houses, we—
All smoothly thundering, tearing on,
A human hurricane—are gone!"—

She listened with rapt lips asunder,
And rounded eyes of brilliant wonder:
Love lent her Faith—nor could she draw
Distinctions nice between what broke
Or did not break, the natural law;
But could she, 'twould have been the same;
Not what was said, but he who spoke,
Made what she heard as what she saw.
That cloudy madness chained and curbed—
And all her Tribe turned undisturbed
Into a screeching bird that flew
Unchecked the yielding Mountains through!—
page 288 What myth could daunt her after that?
What miracle could Superstition name
Were not beside it commonplace and flat—
To stagger her belief, too tame?—
"These foreigners," she smiled, "'tis true,
Whate'er they wish, their Atuas do! "

"An Atua—yes! divine not dread—"
(But this was rather thought than said) "
Could I but make her understand
How this benignant Genie grand,
In form so fierce, in deeds so bland,
Is toiling still o'er sea aud land
With might unwearied and unworn
By slow degrees to raise Mankind;
Bestowing god-like powers, designed
For mightier millions yet unborn,
To wrest her plenteous treasure-horn
From Nature's wise reluctant hand;
Consigning so to second place
The Body's too absorbing claims;
Clearing the ground for higher aims;
Wiping the tears from Man's sad face;
Amalgamating every race—
Creating Time—destroying Space."

VII.

Now to the Fountain-Stair beside the pass,
The great white Fount, the pair their footsteps turning
Paused to admire the baths, whose sheets of glass,
Warm azure, with the blushing west were burning;
And Amo when her simple phrase had told
The simple triumph that illumed
page 289 Her features at her friend's delight
Which seemed to say her country had one sight
At least, as lovely, it must be avowed,
As any in his native land so proud—
The talk where it had broken off resumed:

"Atuas or not—you must be wise and bold
To work the wonders you unfold;
Too ignorant, alas! or dull
Am I, O friend, to comprehend
Such things, I fear. But let me hear—"
She said, in somewhat faltering tone
As shy, lest what she asked make known
More feelings than she cared to own;
"Are not your Maidens beautiful?"

"More so than well my tongue can tell."
"But not more beautiful than you—"
"Than I!" with laughter loud, he cried:
"As much more as the graceful crane
In dainty plumes without a stain
Than her brown-mottled brother harsh,
The booming bittern of the marsh;
As much more as the fragrant strings
Of milky stars I've seen you tear
From some great forest-galaxy
With their sweet snows to double-dye
The sable splendour of your hair,
Than that vile twine of prickles fine
Which if it touch you cuts and clings
Whene'er you push through briar and bush."
page 290 "But O, describe them, dearest, do! "

"Nay, how pourtray, how paint or say
What deep enchantment round them lies—
Great Nature's last felicities,
Her happiest strokes of genius! some of whom—
Heart, mind and body, in the May
And melody of perfect bloom,
The coldest sceptic must assume
The mighty Master fashioned to display
In one consummate work how he
Could make its outward form, a shrine,
A visible symbol and a sign
Of what was throned within—divine!
Aye! spite of Man's idolatry,
For ever pardonably prone
To worship more the shrine than Saint,
And feel from love of that alone
His beauty-burdened Spirit grow
With too much adoration faint—
Resolved in that rare Form to show
For what the rarer Soul was given—
To be to Man a living light
And lure of spiritual beauty bright,
To lead him on from height to height
Of self-denying Love to heaven!—
But who that outward Shrine can paint,
Whose mortal scarce can its immortal shroud!
What lofty-passioned words and tones
Can picture forth those loveliest ones!
So blossom-cheeked, so heavenly-browed,
With dowery of divinest eyes,
Twin fragments of the azure skies
page 291 Beaming celestial blessing through
Pure chastened lids whose perfect white,
And the transparent temples too,
Are stained with streaks of delicate blue
As tender as thick-fallen snow
Deep down in crack and crevice makes
With its own shadow, when the weight
Of piled-up frail congealment breaks.—
Their hair! O take when Morning wakes
Her beams and twine them! pleach and plait
The Moon-sparks shrinking, leaping, linking,
On yonder Lake at midnight—spin them
With all the liquid gold within them
Into fine skeins of splendour! So
You best may guess how tress on tress
In long luxuriant glossiness
Its gleaming undulations flow!—
But you should see—I cannot tell—
What they resemble who so well
Attest what truth of fancy nurst
Your native myth how Woman first
Was fashioned from comminglings sweet
Of brilliant tremors of the noontide heat
That shimmering near you, still retreat,
And airy Echoes, sprites so shy
Yet quick with answering sympathy,
That ever haunting, ever hide
Near cliff abrupt and mountain-side;—
With just enough of added Earth
To temper charms of such etherial birth.
Which else e'en Rapture's self would miss,
Which else its fond embrace would fly—
To something lovelier it can clasp and kiss! "—
page 292 "And have they flaxen mantles fair
As this—with broidered border rare?
And do their greenest jewels shine
Like this pellucid jade of mine? "

"For dress they rob the sunset—take
Its gorgeous glisterings from the Lake,
Or swathe their forms in gauzy mist
The Moon might envy them at night,
Pavilioned with pure amethyst,
In pearliest virgin vesture dight!
And as for gems!—they wreathe about
Their arms that dazzle you without,
And necks, that when your eyes you shut,
Leave shapes of sinuous snowy bloom
In vivid loveliness clear-cut
And floating on the purple gloom—
Such trails of richest radiance set
In linked array of flower and fret,
As if they strung the beaded clusters,
The little lamping fiame-hued lustres,
Sapphires winking rubies blinking,
Trembling emerald-sparks, adorning
The mist-besilvered meads of morning
When first the Sun new-fires them! Aye
And always had that Sun hard by
To keep them, as his only duty,
Still bristling with all hues of beauty!"—

VIII.

But while he spoke there stole unseen
O'er Amohia's frank bright Face
page 293 A shadow—as a slow white cloud
Grows over all the blue sky-space
Left by an opening in the green
O'er-Toofing forest thick-emboughed,
And sheds soft gloom where light but now was shining.
He marked the mournful drooping head,
The cheek where sadly-pensive spread
The long-curled lashes low-declining:
"Yet," said he quickly, "few of those
Have such a faultless form as you,
Whose every facile movement shows
What perfect grace on perfect limbs
The perfect freedom from restraint bestows;
Few such a blithe bright bearing; few
Could bound as is your wont
Up the great mountain-side and chase
The shadow of the cloud that skims
Scarce fleeter in its flying race;
Or at the summit could confront
The bland magnificence of Nature's brow
With such superb and regal innocence
And look and mien so kindred! few have eyes
Of such a brilliant power
They take away your breath and burn
Right through your heart whene'er they turn
Their melting flashes on you! few could shower
Such silky breadths of darkness down as now
I hold between me and their gaze,
To see if still their brightness will
Come breaking through in spurry rays
Like evening sunbeams through a thicket dense!
Yes! howsoe'er those beings fair
With Art to aid and Culture's care
page 294 Form human almost to divine may rise,
For charms like these, not many there
Could with my Wonder of the Wilds compare!"

The sunny look at once returned,
And through the clear warm brown discerned,
The blush of artless triumph burned.
Then round his neck her arms she threw
And gazed, with love how fond and true
As upon something to adore,
Upon the face above her—in that vein
When parted lips and anxious sigh confess
Content is at its highest, and the excess
Of pleasure trembles on the brink of pain;
With simplest admiration too
Reading his features o'er and o'er,
As if her eyes could never feed
Enough, nor sate her heart's impassioned greed
For what to her was beautiful indeed:
'Kai-máta '—' face-devouring gaze'
Her country'j own poetic phrase
Had called the glance that so much love displays.
But how conceive her feeling? How
The picture fond her fancy drew,
The halo round his form she threw!
To that enamoured fancy, quite
Unused to the fair-tinted faces
Of our Caucasian northern races,
This Stranger, with his eyes of sparkling blue
That shone through shadows of a thoughtful brow
Embossed with Intellect, and full and white,
With clustered gold about it curled,
Seemed some high Being from another World!
page 295 August and beautiful and bright
To her he well might seem,
As you perchance would deem
Some Phidian Temple must have looked of old;
Where architrave and pediment arise,
With metope-squares of dauntless proud emprise,
And friezes full of life!—serenely bold
Broadly confronting the broad skies,
And throwing deep majestic shade
(As human brow o'er human eyes)
Into the interspaces made
By many a stalely colonnade;—
As such a Temple must have looked when bare
Its snowy grace and lovely grandeur first
Upon the shouting people burst!
Its solemn charm that would have awed, almost
In the mere splendor of material lost;
Because so brilliant fresh and new,
So delicately tinted here and there
With rainbow colours pure and fair,
The sculptured Marvel stood in view;
The matchless groups around it rife
In stirring trance of pomp or strife,
Sharp from some famous chisel, every one;
The marble dust of recent working
In glittering specks about them lurking—
All just uncovered to the morning Sun!

IX.

But fair as Phidian Temple tinged so purely,
That pure untinged white-terraced Fount corálline
Showed, with its baths cerulean and crystálline,
Whereon they gazed when not upon each other
page 296 Their lover-gaze delightedly was dwelling;
When looks, where Love was seated so securely,
To answering looks ceased passionately telling
The tide of tenderness each bosom swelling:
Then, as theywatched the huge Steam-cloud that whitely
O'er the main pool, like some nest-brooding mother,
Spread swanlike wings the brilliant water shading—
Enveloped and imparadised more brightly
In a Love-cloud as fervid and unfading,
They saw how richly, though from surface duller,
That still, suspended Mist reflected duly
The bubbling basin's amethystine colour;
Returning tint for lovely tint as truly
As in their mirrored eyes, fond, deep, untroubled,
They marked, upwelling ever freshly, newly,
Their mutual Love reflected and redoubled!

Then to the glen that fronts the islets twain
And to their isle itself they come—
That ever-singing isle—through all the train
Of water-birds that swarm the simmering plain,
Thick as the sower's air-scattered grain;
And then their bower of manuka they gain
Already soothing with a sense of home;
The grateful viands follow, fountain-drest;
And then that churme monotonous, ne'er represt,
Lulls them again entranced to Love's Elysian rest.