Ballads
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III. RAHÉRO
Rahéro was there in the hall asleep: beside him his wife,Comely, a mirthful woman, one that delighted in life;And a girl that was ripe for marriage, shy and sly as a mouse;And a boy, a climber of trees: all the hopes of his house.Unwary, with open hands, he slept in the midst of his folk,And dreamed that he heard a voice crying without, and awoke,Leaping blindly afoot like one from a dream that he fears.A hellish glow and clouds were about him; – it roared in his earsLike the sound of the cataract fall that plunges sudden and steep;And Rahéro swayed as he stood, and his reason was still asleep.Now the flame struck hard on the house, wind-wielded, a fracturing blow,And the end of the roof was burst and fell on the sleepers below;And the lofty hall, and the feast, and the prostrate bodies of folk,Shone red in his eyes a moment, and then were swallowed of smoke.In the mind of Rahéro clearness came; and he opened his throat;And as when a squall comes sudden, the straining sail of a boatThunders aloud and bursts, so thundered the voice of the man.– “The wind and the rain!” he shouted, the mustering word of the clan, 14And “up!” and “to arms men of Vaiau!” But silence replied,Or only the voice of the gusts of the fire, and nothing beside.Rahéro stooped and groped. He handled his womankind,But the fumes of the fire and the kava had quenched the life of their mind,And they lay like pillars prone; and his hand encountered the boy,And there sprang in the gloom of his soul a sudden lightning of joy.“Him can I save!” he thought, “if I were speedy enough.”And he loosened the cloth from his loins, and swaddled the child in the stuff;And about the strength of his neck he knotted the burden well.There where the roof had fallen, it roared like the mouth of hell.Thither Rahéro went, stumbling on senseless folk,And grappled a post of the house, and began to climb in the smoke:The last alive of Vaiau; and the son borne by the sire.The post glowed in the grain with ulcers of eating fire,And the fire bit to the blood and mangled his hands and thighs;And the fumes sang in his head like wine and stung in his eyes;And still he climbed, and came to the top, the place of proof,And thrust a hand through the flame, and clambered alive on the roof.But even as he did so, the wind, in a garment of flames and pain,Wrapped him from head to heel; and the waistcloth parted in twain;And the living fruit of his loins dropped in the fire below.About the blazing feast-house clustered the eyes of the foe,Watching, hand upon weapon, lest ever a soul should flee,Shading the brow from the glare, straining the neck to seeOnly, to leeward, the flames in the wind swept far and wide,And the forest sputtered on fire; and there might no man abide.Thither Rahéro crept, and dropped from the burning eaves,And crouching low to the ground, in a treble covert of leavesAnd fire and volleying smoke, ran for the life of his soulUnseen; and behind him under a furnace of ardent coal,Cairned with a wonder of flame, and blotting the night with smoke,Blazed and were smelted together the bones of all his folk.He fled unguided at first; but hearing the breakers roar,Thitherward shaped his way, and came at length to the shore.Sound-limbed he was: dry-eyed; but smarted in every part;And the mighty cage of his ribs heaved on his straining heartWith sorrow and rage. And “Fools!” he cried, “fools of Vaiau,Heads of swine – gluttons – Alas! and where are they now?Those that I played with, those that nursed me, those that I nursed?God, and I outliving them! I, the least and the worst —I, that thought myself crafty, snared by this herd of swine,In the tortures of hell and desolate, stripped of all that was mine:All! – my friends and my fathers – the silver heads of yoreThat trooped to the council, the children that ran to the open doorCrying with innocent voices and clasping a father’s knees!And mine, my wife – my daughter – my sturdy climber of treesAh, never to climb again!” Thus in the dusk of the night,(For clouds rolled in the sky and the moon was swallowed from sight,)Pacing and gnawing his fists, Rahéro raged by the shore.Vengeance: that must be his. But much was to do before;And first a single life to be snatched from a deadly place,A life, the root of revenge, surviving plant of the race:And next the race to be raised anew, and the lands of the clanRepeopled. So Rahéro designed, a prudent manEven in wrath, and turned for the means of revenge and escape:A boat to be seized by stealth, a wife to be taken by rape.Still was the dark lagoon; beyond on the coral wall,He saw the breakers shine, he heard them bellow and fall.Alone, on the top of the reef, a man with a flaming brandWalked, gazing and pausing, a fish-spear poised in his hand.The foam boiled to his calf when the mightier breakers came,And the torch shed in the wind scattering tufts of flame.Afar on the dark lagoon a canoe lay idly at wait:A figure dimly guiding it: surely the fisherman’s mate.Rahéro saw and he smiled. He straightened his mighty thews:Naked, with never a weapon, and covered with scorch and bruise,He straightened his arms, he filled the void of his body with breath,And, strong as the wind in his manhood, doomed the fisher to death.Silent he entered the water, and silently swam, and cameThere where the fisher walked, holding on high the flame.Loud on the pier of the reef volleyed the breach of the sea;And hard at the back of the man, Rahéro crept to his kneeOn the coral, and suddenly sprang and seized him, the elder handClutching the joint of his throat, the other snatching the brandEre it had time to fall, and holding it steady and high.Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye —Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahéro resisted the strain,And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain,And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled a lump at his feet.One moment: and there, on the reef, where the breakers whitened and beat,Rahéro was standing alone, glowing and scorched and bare,A victor unknown of any, raising the torch in the air.But once he drank of his breath, and instantly set him to fishLike a man intent upon supper at home and a savoury dish.For what should the woman have seen? A man with a torch – and thenA moment’s blur of the eyes – and a man with a torch again.And the torch had scarcely been shaken. “Ah, surely,” Rahéro said,“She will deem it a trick of the eyes, a fancy born in the head;But time must be given the fool to nourish a fool’s belief.”So for a while, a sedulous fisher, he walked the reef,Pausing at times and gazing, striking at times with the spear:– Lastly, uttered the call; and even as the boat drew near,Like a man that was done with its use, tossed the torch in the sea.Lightly he leaped on the boat beside the woman; and sheLightly addressed him, and yielded the paddle and place to sit;For now the torch was extinguished the night was black as the pitRahéro set him to row, never a word he spoke,And the boat sang in the water urged by his vigorous stroke.– “What ails you?” the woman asked, “and why did you drop the brand?We have only to kindle another as soon as we come to land.”Never a word Rahéro replied, but urged the canoe.And a chill fell on the woman. – “Atta! speak! is it you?Speak! Why are you silent? Why do you bend aside?Wherefore steer to the seaward?” thus she panted and cried.Never a word from the oarsman, toiling there in the dark;But right for a gate of the reef he silently headed the bark,And wielding the single paddle with passionate sweep on sweep,Drove her, the little fitted, forth on the open deep.And fear, there where she sat, froze the woman to stone:Not fear of the crazy boat and the weltering deep alone;But a keener fear of the night, the dark, and the ghostly hour,And the thing that drove the canoe with more than a mortal’s powerAnd more than a mortal’s boldness. For much she knew of the deadThat haunt and fish upon reefs, toiling, like men, for bread,And traffic with human fishers, or slay them and take their ware,Till the hour when the star of the dead 15 goes down, and the morning airBlows, and the cocks are singing on shore. And surely she knewThe speechless thing at her side belonged to the grave. 16 It blewAll night from the south; all night, Rahéro contended and keptThe prow to the cresting sea; and, silent as though she slept,The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day.High and long on their left the mountainous island lay;And over the peaks of Taiárapu arrows of sunlight struck.On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruckOf the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave;And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave,Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man.And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan:A stranger, mother-naked, and marred with the marks of fire,But comely and great of stature, a man to obey and admire.And Rahéro regarded her also, fixed, with a frowning face,Judging the woman’s fitness to mother a warlike race.Broad of shoulder, ample of girdle, long in the thigh,Deep of bosom she was, and bravely supported his eye.“Woman,” said he, “last night the men of your folk —Man, woman, and maid, smothered my race in smoke.It was done like cowards; and I, a mighty man of my hands,Escaped, a single life; and now to the empty landsAnd smokeless hearths of my people, sail, with yourself, alone.Before your mother was born, the die of to-day was thrownAnd you selected: – your husband, vainly striving, to fallBroken between these hands: – yourself to be severed from all,The places, the people, you love – home, kindred, and clan —And to dwell in a desert and bear the babes of a kinless man.”NOTES TO THE SONG OF RAHÉRO
Introduction. – This tale, of which I have not consciously changed a single feature, I received from tradition. It is highly popular through all the country of the eight Tevas, the clan to which Rahéro belonged; and particularly in Taiárapu, the windward peninsula of Tahiti, where he lived. I have heard from end to end two versions; and as many as five different persons have helped me with details. There seems no reason why the tale should not be true.
THE FEAST OF FAMINE
MARQUESAN MANNERS
I. THE PRIEST’S VIGIL
In all the land of the tribe was neither fish nor fruit,And the deepest pit of popoi stood empty to the foot. 17The clans upon the left and the clans upon the rightNow oiled their carven maces and scoured their daggers bright;They gat them to the thicket, to the deepest of the shade,And lay with sleepless eyes in the deadly ambuscade.And oft in the starry even the song of morning rose,What time the oven smoked in the country of their foes;For oft to loving hearts, and waiting ears and sight,The lads that went to forage returned not with the night.Now first the children sickened, and then the women paled,And the great arms of the warrior no more for war availed.Hushed was the deep drum, discarded was the dance;And those that met the priest now glanced at him askance.The priest was a man of years, his eyes were ruby-red, 18He neither feared the dark nor the terrors of the dead,He knew the songs of races, the names of ancient date;And the beard upon his bosom would have bought the chief’s estate.He dwelt in a high-built lodge, hard by the roaring shore,Raised on a noble terrace and with tikis 19 at the door.Within it was full of riches, for he served his nation well,And full of the sound of breakers, like the hollow of a shell.For weeks he let them perish, gave never a helping sign,But sat on his oiled platform to commune with the divine,But sat on his high terrace, with the tikis by his side,And stared on the blue ocean, like a parrot, ruby-eyed.Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height:Out on the round of the sea the gems of the morning light,Up from the round of the sea the streamers of the sun; —But down in the depths of the valley the day was not begun.In the blue of the woody twilight burned red the cocoa-husk,And the women and men of the clan went forth to bathe in the dusk,A word that began to go round, a word, a whisper, a start:Hope that leaped in the bosom, fear that knocked on the heart:“See, the priest is not risen – look, for his door is fast!He is going to name the victims; he is going to help us at last.”Thrice rose the sun to noon; and ever, like one of the dead,The priest lay still in his house with the roar of the sea in his head;There was never a foot on the floor, there was never a whisper of speech;Only the leering tikis stared on the blinding beach.Again were the mountains fired, again the morning broke;And all the houses lay still, but the house of the priest awoke.Close in their covering roofs lay and trembled the clan,But the agèd, red-eyed priest ran forth like a lunatic man;And the village panted to see him in the jewels of death again,In the silver beards of the old and the hair of women slain.Frenzy shook in his limbs, frenzy shone in his eyes,And still and again as he ran, the valley rang with his cries.All day long in the land, by cliff and thicket and den,He ran his lunatic rounds, and howled for the flesh of men;All day long he ate not, nor ever drank of the brook;And all day long in their houses the people listened and shook —All day long in their houses they listened with bated breath,And never a soul went forth, for the sight of the priest was death.Three were the days of his running, as the gods appointed of yore,Two the nights of his sleeping alone in the place of gore:The drunken slumber of frenzy twice he drank to the lees,On the sacred stones of the High-place under the sacred trees;With a lamp at his ashen head he lay in the place of the feast,And the sacred leaves of the banyan rustled around the priest.Last, when the stated even fell upon terrace and tree,And the shade of the lofty island lay leagues away to sea,And all the valleys of verdure were heavy with manna and musk,The wreck of the red-eyed priest came gasping home in the dusk.He reeled across the village, he staggered along the shore,And between the leering tikis crept groping through his door.There went a stir through the lodges, the voice of speech awoke;Once more from the builded platforms arose the evening smoke.And those who were mighty in war, and those renowned for an artSat in their stated seats and talked of the morrow apart.II. THE LOVERS
Hark! away in the woods – for the ears of love are sharp —Stealthily, quietly touched, the note of the one-stringed harp. 20In the lighted house of her father, why should Taheia start?Taheia heavy of hair, Taheia tender of heart,Taheia the well-descended, a bountiful dealer in love,Nimble of foot like the deer, and kind of eye like the dove?Sly and shy as a cat, with never a change of face,Taheia slips to the door, like one that would breathe a space;Saunters and pauses, and looks at the stars, and lists to the seas;Then sudden and swift as a cat, she plunges under the trees.Swift as a cat she runs, with her garment gathered high,Leaping, nimble of foot, running, certain of eye;And ever to guide her way over the smooth and the sharp,Ever nearer and nearer the note of the one-stringed harp;Till at length, in a glade of the wood, with a naked mountain above,The sound of the harp thrown down, and she in the arms of her love.“Rua,” – “Taheia,” they cry – “my heart, my soul, and my eyes,”And clasp and sunder and kiss, with lovely laughter and sighs,“Rua!” – “Taheia, my love,” – “Rua, star of my night,Clasp me, hold me, and love me, single spring of delight.”And Rua folded her close, he folded her near and long,The living knit to the living, and sang the lover’s song: Night, night it is, night upon the palms. Night, night it is, the land wind has blown. Starry, starry night, over deep and height; Love, love in the valley, love all alone.“Taheia, heavy of hair, a foolish thing have we done,To bind what gods have sundered unkindly into one.Why should a lowly lover have touched Taheia’s skirt,Taheia the well-descended, and Rua child of the dirt?”“ – On high with the haka-ikis my father sits in state,Ten times fifty kinsmen salute him in the gate;Round all his martial body, and in bands across his face,The marks of the tattooer proclaim his lofty place.I too, in the hands of the cunning, in the sacred cabin of palm, 21Have shrunk like the mimosa, and bleated like the lamb;Round half my tender body, that none shall clasp but you,For a crest and a fair adornment go dainty lines of blue.Love, love, beloved Rua, love levels all degrees,And the well-tattooed Taheia clings panting to your knees.”“ – Taheia, song of the morning, how long is the longest love?A cry, a clasp of the hands, a star that falls from above!Ever at morn in the blue, and at night when all is black,Ever it skulks and trembles with the hunter, Death, on its track.Hear me, Taheia, death! For to-morrow the priest shall awake,And the names be named of the victims to bleed for the nation’s sake;And first of the numbered many that shall be slain ere noon,Rua the child of the dirt, Rua the kinless loon.For him shall the drum be beat, for him be raised the song,For him to the sacred High-place the chaunting people throng,For him the oven smoke as for a speechless beast,And the sire of my Taheia come greedy to the feast.”“Rua, be silent, spare me. Taheia closes her ears.Pity my yearning heart, pity my girlish years!Flee from the cruel hands, flee from the knife and coal,Lie hid in the deeps of the woods, Rua, sire of my soul!”“Whither to flee, Taheia, whither in all of the land?The fires of the bloody kitchen are kindled on every hand;On every hand in the isle a hungry whetting of teeth,Eyes in the trees above, arms in the brush beneath.Patience to lie in wait, cunning to follow the sleuth,Abroad the foes I have fought, and at home the friends of my youth.”“Love, love, beloved Rua, love has a clearer eye,Hence from the arms of love you go not forth to die.There, where the broken mountain drops sheer into the glen,There shall you find a hold from the boldest hunter of men;There, in the deep recess, where the sun falls only at noon,And only once in the night enters the light of the moon,Nor ever a sound but of birds, or the rain when it falls with a shout;For death and the fear of death beleaguer the valley about.Tapu it is, but the gods will surely pardon despair;Tapu, but what of that? If Rua can only dare.Tapu and tapu and tapu, I know they are every one right;But the god of every tapu is not always quick to smite.Lie secret there, my Rua, in the arms of awful gods,Sleep in the shade of the trees on the couch of the kindly sods,Sleep and dream of Taheia, Taheia will wake for you;And whenever the land wind blows and the woods are heavy with dew,Alone through the horror of night, 22 with food for the soul of her love,Taheia the undissuaded will hurry true as the dove.”“Taheia, the pit of the night crawls with treacherous things,Spirits of ultimate air and the evil souls of things;The souls of the dead, the stranglers, that perch in the trees of the wood,Waiters for all things human, haters of evil and good.”“Rua, behold me, kiss me, look in my eyes and read;Are these the eyes of a maid that would leave her lover in need?Brave in the eye of day, my father ruled in the fight;The child of his loins, Taheia, will play the man in the night.”So it was spoken, and so agreed, and Taheia aroseAnd smiled in the stars and was gone, swift as the swallow goes;And Rua stood on the hill, and sighed, and followed her flight,And there were the lodges below, each with its door alight;From folk that sat on the terrace and drew out the even longSudden crowings of laughter, monotonous drone of song;The quiet passage of souls over his head in the trees; 23And from all around the haven the crumbling thunder of seas.“Farewell, my home,” said Rua. “Farewell, O quiet seat!To-morrow in all your valleys the drum of death shall beat.”III. THE FEAST
Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the naked peak,And all the village was stirring, for now was the priest to speak.Forth on his terrace he came, and sat with the chief in talk;His lips were blackened with fever, his cheeks were whiter than chalk;Fever clutched at his hands, fever nodded his head,But, quiet and steady and cruel, his eyes shone ruby-red.In the earliest rays of the sun the chief rose up content;Braves were summoned, and drummers; messengers came and went;Braves ran to their lodges, weapons were snatched from the wall;The commons herded together, and fear was over them all.Festival dresses they wore, but the tongue was dry in their mouth,And the blinking eyes in their faces skirted from north to south.Now to the sacred enclosure gathered the greatest and least,And from under the shade of the banyan arose the voice of the feast,The frenzied roll of the drum, and a swift, monotonous song.Higher the sun swam up; the trade wind level and strongAwoke in the tops of the palms and rattled the fans aloud,And over the garlanded heads and shining robes of the crowdTossed the spiders of shadow, scattered the jewels of sun.Forty the tale of the drums, and the forty throbbed like one;A thousand hearts in the crowd, and the even chorus of song,Swift as the feet of a runner, trampled a thousand strong.And the old men leered at the ovens and licked their lips for the food;And the women stared at the lads, and laughed and looked to the wood.As when the sweltering baker, at night, when the city is dead,Alone in the trough of labour treads and fashions the bread;So in the heat, and the reek, and the touch of woman and man,The naked spirit of evil kneaded the hearts of the clan.Now cold was at many a heart, and shaking in many a seat;For there were the empty baskets, but who was to furnish the meat?For here was the nation assembled, and there were the ovens anigh,And out of a thousand singers nine were numbered to die.Till, of a sudden, a shock, a mace in the air, a yell,And, struck in the edge of the crowd, the first of the victims fell. 24Terror and horrible glee divided the shrinking clan,Terror of what was to follow, glee for a diet of man.Frenzy hurried the chaunt, frenzy rattled the drums;The nobles, high on the terrace, greedily mouthed their thumbs;And once and again and again, in the ignorant crowd below,Once and again and again descended the murderous blow.Now smoked the oven, and now, with the cutting lip of a shell,A butcher of ninety winters jointed the bodies well.Unto the carven lodge, silent, in order due,The grandees of the nation one after one withdrew;And a line of laden bearers brought to the terrace foot,On poles across their shoulders, the last reserve of fruit.The victims bled for the nobles in the old appointed way;The fruit was spread for the commons, for all should eat to-day.And now was the kava brewed, and now the cocoa ran,Now was the hour of the dance for child and woman and man;And mirth was in every heart, and a garland on every head,And all was well with the living and well with the eight who were dead.Only the chiefs and the priest talked and consulted awhile:“To-morrow,” they said, and “To-morrow,” and nodded and seemed to smile:“Rua the child of dirt, the creature of common clay,Rua must die to-morrow, since Rua is gone to-day.”Out of the groves of the valley, where clear the blackbirds sang.Sheer from the trees of the valley the face of the mountain sprang;Sheer and bare it rose, unscalable barricade,Beaten and blown against by the generous draught of the trade.Dawn on its fluted brow painted rainbow light,Close on its pinnacled crown trembled the stars at night.Here and there in a cleft clustered contorted trees,Or the silver beard of a stream hung and swung in the breeze.High overhead, with a cry, the torrents leaped for the main,And silently sprinkled below in thin perennial rain.Dark in the staring noon, dark was Rua’s ravine,Damp and cold was the air, and the face of the cliffs was green.Here, in the rocky pit, accursed already of old,On a stone in the midst of a river, Rua sat and was cold.“Valley of mid-day shadows, valley of silent falls,”Rua sang, and his voice went hollow about the walls,“Valley of shadow and rock, a doleful prison to me,What is the life you can give to a child of the sun and the sea?”And Rua arose and came to the open mouth of the glen,Whence he beheld the woods, and the sea, and houses of men.Wide blew the riotous trade, and smelt in his nostrils good;It bowed the boats on the bay, and tore and divided the wood;It smote and sundered the groves as Moses smote with the rod,And the streamers of all the trees blew like banners abroad;And ever and on, in a lull, the trade wind brought him alongA far-off patter of drums and a far-off whisper of song.Swift as the swallow’s wings, the diligent hands on the drumFluttered and hurried and throbbed. “Ah, woe that I hear you come,”Rua cried in his grief, “a sorrowful sound to me,Mounting far and faint from the resonant shore of the sea!Woe in the song! for the grave breathes in the singers’ breath,And I hear in the tramp of the drums the beat of the heart of death.Home of my youth! no more, through all the length of the years,No more to the place of the echoes of early laughter and tears,No more shall Rua return; no more as the evening ends,To crowded eyes of welcome, to the reaching hands of friends.”All day long from the High-place the drums and the singing came,And the even fell, and the sun went down, a wheel of flame;And night came gleaning the shadows and hushing the sounds of the wood;And silence slept on all, where Rua sorrowed and stood.But still from the shore of the bay the sound of the festival rang,And still the crowd in the High-place danced and shouted and sang.Now over all the isle terror was breathed abroadOf shadowy hands from the trees and shadowy snares in the sod;And before the nostrils of night, the shuddering hunter of menHurried, with beard on shoulder, back to his lighted den.“Taheia, here to my side!” – “Rua, my Rua, you!”And cold from the clutch of terror, cold with the damp of the dew,Taheia, heavy of hair, leaped through the dark to his arms;Taheia leaped to his clasp, and was folded in from alarms.“Rua, beloved, here, see what your love has brought;Coming – alas! returning – swift as the shuttle of thought;Returning, alas! for to-night, with the beaten drum and the voice,In the shine of many torches must the sleepless clan rejoice;And Taheia the well-descended, the daughter of chief and priest,Taheia must sit in her place in the crowded bench of the feast.”So it was spoken; and she, girding her garment high,Fled and was swallowed of woods, swift as the sight of an eye.Night over isle and sea rolled her curtain of stars,Then a trouble awoke in the air, the east was banded with bars;Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height;Dawn, in the deepest glen, fell a wonder of light;High and clear stood the palms in the eye of the brightening east,And lo! from the sides of the sea the broken sound of the feast!As, when in days of summer, through open windows, the flySwift as a breeze and loud as a trump goes by,But when frosts in the field have pinched the wintering mouse,Blindly noses and buzzes and hums in the firelit house:So the sound of the feast gallantly trampled at night,So it staggered and drooped, and droned in the morning light.