A LAMENT FOR KAPORERE, A CHILD.

Waka Maori, Volume 10, Issue 19, 22 September 1874, Page 243

A LAMENT FOR KAPORERE, A CHILD.

By his father, Reneti Tapa.

(Died at Whanganui, Ist February, 1874.) (Translation versified by George H. Wilson, author of "Ena, or the Ancient Maori." Cold, slow, and mournful, up the eastern skies, The pale gray dawn on vapoury errand hies, Illuming with its light the mountain crest, Whereon mine eyes in saddest watching rest. Here lies my boy, his every .pain is done, His every smile is past,—alas ! my son, Death came, and found thy spirit weak and torn; It silent fled, as this drear silent morn Comes creeping down the sky and rugged hill— At hour like this the foeman's voices fill The startled air with cries of dire revenge, As toward the embattled pah their warriors plunge. Who now shall guide our old canoes of fame, In which from lost Hawaiki hither came The people of these isles along the sea, The Arawa and Tainui—bold and free. They're slowly uearing dark destruction's verge— Out of death's gloom, no hope can e'er emerge. You're gone my son, to join Aotea's crew; Hokau thy ancestor now waits for you — Lay out the skids, and spread them with due care Whereby we launch the voyagers in air. Let ghostly hands, and ghostly voices keep The time, and chaunt, when on the blackest deep. The death-canoe is hurled —how ? whither ? where ? Whilst shrieks of " lift up! pull up!" rend the air. Approach, dread spirit! I'll point thee out the road, By which thoul't travel to the high abode Of Toi, who in upper skies doth dwell, And with him —so our oldest legends tell— Tawhaki lives, in endless rounds of joy, Beyond the reach of death or time's alloy. Thou must away by Pirimoko hie, And on by Raramoko through the sky. And when thy journey's done, and thou art come Into the homes that span th' ethereal dome, Thou mayest, like Maui, use the thunder-stave When thou goest fishing on the skyey wave. * Farewell! young spirit, may thy voyage be To other worlds from scowling dangers free.

* When Maui pulled up liis ponderous fish (the island of New Zealand), having no weapon at hand with which, to strike it, he killed it with the thunder of the heavens.

Note.—The above is indeed a very free versification of the original. The lament is in itself a remarkable specimen of the extreme simplicity of the imagery employed so appropriately by the Native poet; the effect is altogether fine and successful. The triple similitude of aioe, and terror, preceded by stealth, as in the approach of morning seen on the dim outlines of Tongariro ; the approach of death to the child, and that at such an hour as an enemy would be sure to choose to advance on his errand of death, is not only interesting, it is more ; it is an elaborate, though fragmentary, and artistic, although rugged, treatment of a difficult subject. The impending extinction of the mourner's family is pathetically alluded to in the perilous position of the canoe losing its equilibrium when on the verge of danger. The loss of its occupants, from the earliest to the latest members of his once powerful house, bring out from the mind of the Maori bavd short broken sobbings of the keenest grief. Yet he is aware that from such a fate there is no escape, and he reconciles himself to his loss by directing the spirit on. its heavenward voyage. This is done in abrupt phraseology, which, more than likely, hides under its rude exterior ideas belonging to a higher state of mental cultivation than now obtains among the modern Maori singers.—G-. H. Wilson.