Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/163
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The Coming of Te Rauparaha.
127
There Waiora’s living waters
Purge the battle stain;
There the ancient angry daughters
Lave and grow again.
Purge the battle stain;
There the ancient angry daughters
Lave and grow again.
You’ll never break the prison golden,—
Never, late or soon,
Rona, Rona, sister olden,—
Rona in the moon!
Never, late or soon,
Rona, Rona, sister olden,—
Rona in the moon!
LXXVIII.
The Coming of Te Rauparaha.
Blue, the wreaths of smoke, like drooping banners
From the flaming battlements of sunset
Hung suspended; and within his whare
Hipe, last of Ngatiraukawa’s chieftains,
Lay a-dying! Ringed about his death-bed,
Like a palisade of carven figures,
Stood the silent people of the village—
Warriors and women of his hapu—
Waiting. Then a sudden spilth of sunlight
Splashed upon the mountain-peak above them,
And it blossomed redly like a rata.
From the flaming battlements of sunset
Hung suspended; and within his whare
Hipe, last of Ngatiraukawa’s chieftains,
Lay a-dying! Ringed about his death-bed,
Like a palisade of carven figures,
Stood the silent people of the village—
Warriors and women of his hapu—
Waiting. Then a sudden spilth of sunlight
Splashed upon the mountain-peak above them,
And it blossomed redly like a rata.
With his people and the twilight pausing;
Withering to death in regal patience,
Taciturn and grim, lay Hipe dying.
Withering to death in regal patience,
Taciturn and grim, lay Hipe dying.
Shuddering and green, a little lizard
Made a ripple through the whare’s darkness,
Made a ripple through the whare’s darkness,