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Ranolf and Amohia

III

III.

Said Amohia, "In your heart you laugh;
You think all this is nonsense, 10-E'chaff;'
Nay then, O Stranger, answer in your turn,
For still the Sun is riding high,
Of his beginning—of the birth
Of all things, Sea and Sky and Earth,
What from their Sages do the white men learn?"'

Silent he scanned an instant's space
The open eyes, the candid face
Of the enquiring earnest Maid;
page 135 Then as a half-satiric smile
Twitched at the corners of his mouth, the while
Lurked in his eyes a sly malicious twinkle,
Rushed off into a wild tirade—
Not caring if his words were clear or dim,
Only obedient to the moment's whim,
Somewhat like this;—for we must sprinkle
With phrases freer, fuller and more flowery,
Than match the rudeness of his simple Maori—
Omitting interruptions too
And explanations not a few—
The terms the careless youth employed
To give to her whose wonder he enjoyed,
Some notion of the Deity—the greatest
By Science hit on—or at least, the latest:
"There's a God they call Motion; a-wonderful Being,
Omnipresent, omnipotent! thinking and seeing,
All life, birth, existences, creatures, conditions,
Of his versatile skill ever-new exhibitions,
Are but phases his phantasy, subtle or simple,
Condescends to assume; from the faintest first dimple
He indents in the vapour that veils him—beginning
As he slides to a pirouette graceful and winning,
Such a whirl of Creation, such Universe-spinning—
To his last of developments dense or ethereal,
When as Consciousness crowned with a halo imperial,
Though but grovelling in granules and cells ganglionic
In the brain of Mankind sits the grand Histrionic!
Tis the strangest and stoutest of creeds and convictions—
Tis a God that defies and disdains contradictions:
His adorers, though puzzled perhaps to say whether
He is they, or they he, they are mixed so together;—
page 136 Though himself best proclaims his own glory Protean
When as lightning he dances with worship Judæan,
Or intones as deep thunder his own Io-Pæan;—
Though reluctant and shy to acknowledge, avow him
Yet with all that is precious and priceless endow him.
At the shrine of this Pagod they immolate gaily
Aspirations Humanity feeds upon daily;
There consume, with serene suicidal devotion
Whole heart-loads of lofty and tender emotion,
All the foredawn of gold over Life's darksome ocean:
And they vary his victims with Logic—no little;
Never spare Common Sense—not a fraction—nor title;
Show no mercy for Sciences, moral or mental;
And for Metaphysicians—the tribe transcendental.
Would burn them to cinders—a holocaust; striving
On the ashes to keep their Divinity thriving.
For strange though it seem, this Almighty Mechanic,
Undesigning Designer of all things organic,
Comes from nowhere himself: his own Father and Mother—
Never caused though all-causing—derived from no other;
And arranges, combines for such orderly courses
His myriad myriads of multiform forces,
By accident only—repulsion—attraction—
Into beautiful symmetry, uniform action;
By merest unconscious haphazard produces
Profound adaptations to infinite uses;
And as helplessly, stolidly stumbles on wonders,
With as little intention, as others on blunders;
Deaf and dumb, and stone blind, can make eyes, ears and voices,
Till with Beauty—Light—Music—all Mature rejoices;
Nay, unconscious beforehand arrives in due season
By dint of mere going, at Thought, Sense and Reason;
page 137 With no Mind, makes all Mind—that fine consummation,
That can trace the back steps of the blind operation;
Aye can soar on the wings of sublime calculation
O'er the flaming far ramparts of star-filled Creation.
So this Fetish—this Stock-God, this Impulse unguided,
With no aim and no sense, yet success so decided,
Still is fashioning Matter by no one provided
Into Minds like vast Mountains a World overviewing;—
With no better notion of what he is doing,
Hits off Shakspeares and Newtons and Caesars and Platos—
Than the logs on the ashes which roast your potatoes:
And the men who consider this creed satisfactory
And would smile with mild pity on Sceptics refractory,
Poor crawlers who crowd to a house with a steeple,—
Are—some of the wisest and best of our people"
To this effusion nought replied
The listeners; only said aside,
"The Stranger mocks us;" quietly—
Too courteous for expressed dissent,
Too proud to show astonishment
Or ignorance of their Guest's intent.
That laughing lunch-purveyor, he
Only to Miroa muttered low:
"A tito this—a fib, I know;
'Tis nothing like what Mapou says
Of their white Àtua and his ways;
And he can tell, who visits most
And learns all news that reach the coast.
This Stranger too,"—and here the grin
Grew broader,—" by his dress at least
Is not a Tohunga, a Priest;
page 138 For Mapou says, they always go
In shining black from top to toe,
With two white plumes beneath their chin,
Just like that Tu-i, Mapou thought."
And Ranolf smiled, whose quick ear caught
The fancy, as he saw just then
The bird they spoke of, down the glen
Come dashing, with its glossy coat
Like jet-black satin shot with green
And blue reflexions—at its throat
Two dainty-pencilled plumes of snow;
And once again admired, as oft
Before, its lively ways and note;
As flitting, shifting to and fro
It ransacked every kowhai-tree
In yellow bloom, and loudly coughed
And loudly whistled in its glee,
And turned quite over, bending low
Its busy head to reach and dip
Into the pendent flowers and sip
Their juice, in fluttering glad unrest,
Unceasing in its honey-quest

"That may be true," said Miroa, "too;
For 'tis averred they are like a bird
In this (although it seems a joke)
They cannot speak like other folk.
But always sing what they would say,
E'en when they to their Àtua pray."
—But here that feather-crested Dame
Who this light chatter overheard
Rebuked them—feeling it became
Her sage experience to repress
page 139 Such sallies of mere sauciness:
"Oh foolish you! we always do
Ourselves in all our prayers the same!
Do we not sing for all we want?
May they not know some potent chaunt
To charm their Àtua from his haunt,
As we coax eels to leave the mud?"—
Such reasoning they could not gainsay,
It nipped their satire in the bud.