Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/168

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132

The Coming of Te Rauparaha.

“If ye choose me chieftain I shall lead you
Down to meet the white-one on the sea-coast,
Where his hordes shall break like scattered billows
From our wall of meres. Him o’erwhelming,

“I shall wrest his flaming weapons from him,
Fortify for pah the rugged island
Kapiti; then like a black hawk swooping
I shall whirl upon the Southern island,
Sweep it with my name as with a tempest,
Overrun it like the play of sunlight,
Sigh across it like a flame, till Terror
Runs before me shrieking! And our pathway
Shall be sullen red with flames and bloodshed,
And shall moan with massacre and battle!

“Quenching every foe, beneath my mana
Tribe shall stand with tribe, till all my nation
Like a harsh impassive wall of forest
Imperturbably shall front the strangers. . . .

“Then the name of me, Te Rauparaha,
And the tribe I lead, the Ngatitoa,
Shall be shrined in sacred myth and legend
With the glamour of our oft-told prowess
Wreathed about them! Think, we shall be saviours
Of a race, a nation! And this island
We have sown so thick with names—each hillock,
Glen and gully, stream and tribal limit—
Shall for ever blossom like a garden.

With the liquid softness of their music!
And the flute shall still across the evening
Lilt and waver, brimming with love’s yearning! . . .”