I was thoroughly aroused—moreover, I felt a foreshadowing as though my attention were arrested by something more than the dream, although no sense in particular was as yet appealed to. I held my breath and waited, and then I heard—was it fancy? Nay; I listened again and again, and I did hear a faint and extremely distant sound of music, like that of an Aeolian harp, borne upon the wind which was blowing fresh and chill from the opposite mountains.
The roots of my hair thrilled. I listened, but the wind had died; and, fancying that it must have been the wind itself—no; on a sudden I remembered the noise which Chowbok had made in the wool-shed. Yes; it was that.
Thank Heaven, whatever it was, it was over now. I reasoned with myself, and recovered my firmness. I became convinced that I had only been dreaming more vividly than usual. Soon I began even to laugh, and think what a fool I was to be frightened at nothing, reminding myself that even if I were to come to a bad end it would be no such dreadful matter after all. I said my prayers, a duty which I had too often neglected, and in a little time fell into a really refreshing sleep, which lasted till broad daylight, and restored me. I rose, and searching among the embers of my fire, I found a few live coals and soon had a blaze again. I got breakfast, and was delighted to have the company of several small birds, which hopped about me and perched on my boots and hands. I felt comparatively happy, but I can assure the reader that I had had a far worse time of it than I have told him; and I strongly recommend him to remain in Europe if he can; or, at any rate, in some country which has been explored and settled, rather than go into places where others have not been before him. Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.
(1872)
Anonymous, ‘Original Poetry’, from the Daily Southern Cross
Here let me oft to muse retire
Beneath the shadow of the rock,
For ’tis the freedom I desire,
All freedom else is but a mock,
Here let me dwell on pleasures past
On sunny days for ever gone,
Bright visions failing fading fast,
Ye come to tell that I’m alone.
I hear their voices on the gale,
The friends I loved in early youth
They come—I listen to their tale,
It speaks of friendship, love and truth;
I hear them sighing on the wind:
But ’tis not for their fate they mourn,
’Tis that they feel for those behind,
Though they desire not to return.
(1843)
Colonial Romance
Alfred Domett, from Ranolf and Amohia
It was a wondrous realm beguiled
Our youth amid its charms to roam;
O’er scenes more fair, serenely wild,
Not often summer’s glory smiled;
When flecks of cloud, transparent, bright,
No alabaster half so white—
Hung lightly in a luminous dome
Of sapphire—seemed to float and sleep
Far in the front of its blue steep;
And almost awful, none the less
For its liquescent loveliness,
Behind them sunk—just o’er the hill
The deep abyss, profound and still—
The so immediate Infinite;
That yet emerged, the same, it seemed
In hue divine and melting balm,
In many a lake whose crystal calm
Uncrisped, unwrinkled, scarcely gleamed;
Where sky above and lake below
Would like one sphere of azure show,
Save for the circling belt alone,
The softly-painted purple zone
Of mountains—bathed where nearer seen
In sunny tints of sober green,
With velvet dark of woods between,
All glossy glooms and shifting sheen;
While here and there, some peak of snow
Would o’er their tenderer violet lean.
And yet within this region, fair
With wealth of waving woods—these glades
And glens and lustre-smitten shades,
Where trees of tropic beauty rare
With graceful spread and ample swell
Uprose—and that strange asphodel
On tufts of stiff green bayonet-blades,
Great bunches of white bloom upbore,
Like blocks of seawashed madrepore,
That steeped the noon in fragrance wide,
Till by the exceeding sweet opprest
The stately tree-fern leaned aside
For languor, with its starry crown
Of radiating fretted fans,
And proudly-springing beauteous crest
Of shoots all brown with glistening down,
Curved like the lyre-bird’s tail half-spread,
Or necks opposed of wrangling swans,
Red bill to bill—black breast to breast—
Aye! in this realm of seeming rest,
What sights you met and sounds of dread!
Calcareous caldrons, deep and large
With geysers hissing to their marge;
Sulphureous fumes that spout and blow;
Columns and cones of boiling snow;
And sable lazy-bubbling pools
Of sputtering mud that never cools;
With jets of steam through narrow vents
Uproaring, maddening to the sky,
Like cannon-mouths that shoot on high
In unremitting loud discharge
Their inexhaustible contents;
While oft beneath the trembling ground
Rumbles a drear persistent sound
Like ponderous engines infinite, working
At some tremendous task below!—
Such are the signs and symptoms—lurking
Or launching forth in dread display—
Of hidden fires, internal strife,
Amid that leafy, lush array
Of rank luxuriant verdurous life:
Glad haunts above where blissful love
Might revel, rove, enraptured dwell;
But through them pierce such tokens fierce
Of rage beneath and frenzies fell;
As if, to quench and stifle it,
Green Paradise were flung o’er Hell—
Flung fresh with all her bowers close-knit,
Her dewy vales and dimpled streams;
Yet could not so its fury quell
But that the old red realm accurst
Would still recalcitrate, rebel,
Still struggle upward and outburst
In scalding fumes, sulphureous steams.
It struck you as you paused to trace
The sunny scenery’s strange extremes,
As if in some divinest face,
All heavenly smiles, angelic grace,
Your eye at times discerned, despite
Sweet looks with innocence elate,
Some wan wild spasm of blank affright,
Or demon scowl of pent-up hate;
Or some convulsive writhe confest,
For all that bloom of beauty bright,
An anguish not to be represt.
You look—a moment bask in, bless,
Its laughing light of happiness;
But look again—what startling throes
And fiery pangs of fierce distress
The lovely lineaments disclose—
How o’er the fascinating features flit
The genuine passions of the nether pit!
[…]
A shriek within the covert near,
A second, third, assailed his ear;
Straight for the sound at once he dashed;
Through tangled boughs and brushwood crashed,
And lopped and slashed the tangles black
Of looped and shining supplejack,
Till on a startling scene
he came,
That filled his soul with rage and shame.
Her mantle flung upon the ground,
Her graceful arms behind her bound,
With shoulders bare, dishevelled hair,
There stood a Maiden of the land,
More stately fair than could elsewhere
Through all its ample range be found.
Two of his comrades, hired amid
The tribes whose chieftains held command
O’er all the vales those mountains hid—
Those western mountains forest-crowned—
Wild striplings, who, uncurbed from birth,
Deemed foulest wrong but food for mirth,
So that their listless life it stirred,
Were basely busy on each hand,
With flax-blades binding to a tree
The Maid who strove her limbs to free.
They knew her—for they oft had heard
Of that surpassing form and face;
They knew the hate, concealed or shown,
Between her people and their own;
The feuds, when open war would cease,
That smouldered in precarious peace;
They knew the track by which the chase
Had lured them to that lonely place,
Was so unused, so tangled, rough,
They doubtless would have time enough,
And might without pursuit retrace
Their steps through mountain-woods, so dense,
No wrong would be suspected thence,
No outrage dreamt of; so they thought—
If such a thoughtless impulse wild
Of mischief can a thought be styled—
They fancied, when the Maid they caught
At that secluded spot, alone,
With one slave-girl (who shrieking fled,
while after her a third accomplice sped,
Lest she the alarm too soon should spread)
It was a chance to win a name,
Through all the tribe some facile fame—
Let but their foreign friend agree,
If such a captive to their chief they led,
At his behest, dispose, to be.
Not more incensed—scarce lovelier in her wrath—
The silver-bow’d snow-Goddess seen
By rapt Actæon at her awful bath;
Not prouder looked—scarce fiercer in her pride,
The yellow-haired Icenian Queen,
Stung by the tortures she defied—
Than did that flaxen-kilted Maid—
A warmer Dian—at her russet rise,
Dun-shining through autumnal mist;
A young Boadicea sunnier skies
Had into browner beauty kissed.
So flashed her eyes with scorn and ire,
They seemed, as deep in purple shade
The slanting sunbeams left the wood
And gloomy yew whereby she stood,
Two glowing gems of hazel fire:
And though a single sparkling tear—
Upon each lower eyelid checked,
Whose thick silk fringe, a coalblack streak,
So darkly decked her flushing cheek
In mellow contrast to its clear
Rich almond brown—alone confest
Some softer feelings lurked among
The passions that her bosom wrung;
Yet indignation’s withering flame
So towered and triumphed o’er the rest,
Did so enkindle and inform
Her heaving breast, her writhing frame,
Just then, you would almost have deemed,
Her very tresses as they streamed,
With lightnings from that inner storm,
And not with flecks of sunset, gleamed.
‘Slaves!’ she was saying: ‘this to me!
Me, Amohia! Know you not
The daughter of the “Wailing Sea?”
Is TANGI-MOANA forgot?
When he shall this vile outrage know,
Your homes shall blaze, your hearts’ blood flow;
A life for every hair shall pay
Of her you’ve dared insult this day!’
Swift to her aid our Wanderer sprung,
Aside those ruffians roughly flung;
Cut, tore away, the bonds that laced
Those tender arms, that slender waist;
Reproached, rebuked with sarcasm strong
The culprits for their coward wrong;
The Maid with soothing words addrest—
Regret and deep disgust expressed
At what disturbed her—so distrest;
By every gesture, look, declared
How much her grief and pain he shared;
Urged all that might with most effect
Her anger stay, her grief allay,
And smooth her ruffled self-respect.
And if, while thus the Maid he freed
With eager haste, and soon replaced
Her mantle, tagged with sable cords
Of silky flax in simple taste,
He could not choose but interfuse
Some looks amid his cheering words,
Keen admiration’s natural meed
To one with so much beauty graced;
Think you, this stranger’s form and mien
Could fail to make their influence felt;
Unconscious though she might have been
Of their magnetic power to melt,
Pierce, permeate her spirit’s gloom,
And all her brightening breast illume,
Till docile, ductile, it became
To his persuasive voice’s sway—
Mild breathings of discretion, reason’s claim;
As on a summer day
The silent sunbeams sink into and fill
A snowy cloud, and make it lighter still
For gentlest breeze to bear away?
And pleased was he, surprised to mark
How swiftly vanished every trace
Of passion so tempestuous, dark;
Its shadow floating off a face
Where, sooth to say, at any time
It seemed as alien, out of place,
As some great prey-bird’s, haply seen,
Not mid the awful regions where he breeds,
Sky-sweeping mountains, towering peaks sublime,
But in a land with daisied lawns and meads
And rippling seas of poppied corn serene.
And all her story soon was told;
How she had left Mokoia’s isle
That central in the lake alone
Rose high—a bristling mountain-hold,
With fort and fosse—a dark green boss
On that bright shield of azure-stone—
Had left the isle, the time to while
With one companion in her light canoe;
While in a larger came a fisher-crew
She wiselier should have kept in view;
But they two of the sport had soon
Grown weary in the glaring noon;
So landed, from the sun’s attacks
Their splendour-puckered eyebrows to relax
In the refreshing grateful shade
A clump of trees not distant made;
Thence to a spot amid the level hills
Of Rangikáhu, where a hotspring fills,
Near a deserted settlement,
A square stone-tank (’twas Miroa’s whim), they went
To boil some sweet roots which they found
As they expected in a patch
Of old abandoned garden-ground:
That done, they strolled the forest through,
And strolled to little purpose too;
Had tried a parrot for a pet to catch
In vain; had seen, by marshy glade
Or woodside brake, look where they might,
No tangle of convolvulus to twine
Into rich coronals of cups aglow
With deep rose-purple or delicate whit
e
Pink-flushed as sunset-tinted snow;
No clematis, so lovely in decline,
Whose star-flowers when they cease to shine
Fade into feathery wreaths silk-bright
And silvery-curled, as beauteous. And they knew
The early season could not yet
Have ripened the alectryon’s beads of jet,
Each on its scarlet strawberry set,
Whence sweet cosmetic oils they press
Their glittering blue-black hair to dress
Or give the skin its velvet suppleness:
So they had loitered objectless,
And chaunting songs or chatting strayed
Till by his rude associates met.
Her simple story told, the Maid
Asked in her turn the Wanderer’s name;
Tried to pronounce it too—but still,
With pretty looks of mock distress
And scorn at her own want of skill,
And tempting twisting lips, no stain
Of tattoo had turned azure—found
‘Ranolf’ too strange and harsh a sound
For her harmonious speech to frame;
So after various efforts vain
‘Ranóro’ it at last became,
The nearest imitation plain
Her liquid accents could attain.
Thus, when at length they reached the shore,
Had found and freed and comforted
The damsel who at first had fled
(Poor little Miroa, weeping sore),
And launched the small canoe once more,
’Twas with a farewell kind and gay
She bade the stranger ‘Go his way’;
’Twas with her radiant ready smile
She started for the mountain-isle,
Which then, one mass of greenish gold,
Shone out in sharp relief and bold
Against the further hills that lay
In solemn violet-gloom—grim, dark and cold.
So towards his tent his steps he bent;
Nor marvel if as home he went
His thoughts to her would still recur:—
‘—But Amohia! what a glorious creature
In every gesture, every feature!
Such melting brilliant eyes! I swear
They cast a shadow from whate’er
They rest upon! I do believe they throw
Such shifting circlets of soft light
On what she looks at, as a sunbeam weaves
On the green darkness of the noonday woods,
Through chinks in the transparent leaves!
And then her hair! to see it but unbound!
Such black abundant floods
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 12