The Coming of The 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.  
  With his people and the twilight pausing;
 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,
 Writhing close to Hipe! Then a whisper
 On the women's dry lips hesitated
 As the ring of figures fluttered backwards;
 “ 'T is the Spirit-Thing that comes to carry
 Hipe's tardy soul across the waters
 To the world of stars!” And Hipe, grimly,
 Felt its hungry eyes a-glitter on him;
 Then he knew the spirit-world had called him;
 Knew the lizard-messenger must hasten,
 And would carry back a soul for answer.  
 
  Twenty days in silence he had listened,
 Dumb with thoughts of death, and sorely troubled
 For his tribe left leaderless and lonely.  
  Now like sullen thunder from the blackness
 Of the whare swept a voice untinctured
 With a stain of sickness; and the women,
 Breaking backwards, shrieked in sudden terror,
 “ 'T is the weird Thing's voice, the greenish lizard,
 All-impatient for the soul of Hipe!”
 But the warriors in the shadow straightened
 Drooping shoulders, gripped their greenstone meres,
 And the rhythmic tumult of the war-dance
 Swept the great pah with its throbbing thunder:
 While their glad throats chanted, “E, 't is Hipe!
 Hipe's voice that led us in the battle;
 Hipe, young, come back to lead us ever!”  
  “Warriors and women of my hapu,”
 Whirled the voice of Hipe from the darkness,
 “I have had communion with the spirits;
 Listen while I chant the song they taught me!  
  “I have seen the coming end of all things,
 Seen the Maori shattered 'neath the onrush
 Of the white-faced strangers. Like the flashing
 Of the Sun-God through the ranks of darkness,
 Like the Fire-God rippling through the forest,
 Like the winter's silent blight of snowflakes—
 Lo, the strange outbreak of pallid blossoms!—
 
 Sweeps this surging wave of stranger-faces,
 Frothing irresistibly upon us.  
  “Lo, the Pakeha shall come and conquer;
 We have failed; the Gods are angry with us.
 See, the withered autumn of our greatness!  
  “Old ancestral myths and sacred legends
 That we deemed immortal—(priest and wizard
 Died, and yet their stories, like a river,
 Through the long years ran on, ever changeless!)—
 Shall be buried; and the names long given
 To each hill, and stream, and path and gully,
 Shall be like a yesterday forgotten,
 Blown like trembling froth before the sea-breeze.  
  “And the gods that people all our islands—
 This great sea of presences immortal,
 Living, real, alert for charm or evil,
 Hurrying in every breeze, and haunting,
 Heavy-winged, the vistas of the forest,
 Deluging the daylight with their presence,
 Teeming, flooding, brimming in the shadows—
 Shall be banished to their spirit-regions,
 And the world be lorn of gods and lonely.  
  “And the Maori shall no long time linger
 Ere, a tardy exile, he shall journey
 To the under-world. Yet he shall never
 Break before this influx, but shall fight on
 
 Till, a mangled thing, the tide o'erwhelm him.
 And my tribe, the mighty Ngatiraukawa,
 Had they left one worthy chieftain only
 Who could lead my people on to victory,
 Who could follow where my feet have trodden,
 Might yet rear their name into a pillar
 Carved with fame, until their stubborn story
 From the mists of legend broke tremendous.
 Flaming through the chilly years to follow
 With a sunset-splendour, huge, heroic!  
  “Yes, the time is yours to rear a nation
 From one conquering tribe, the Ngatiraukawa;
 But my pah is leaderless and lonely;
 I am left, the last of Maori chieftains;
 And the gods have called me now to lead them
 In their mighty battles! There is no one
 Worthy now to wield my dying mana!”  
  So he ceased, and tremulous the silence
 Sighed to voice in one long wail of sorrow.
 So; it was the truth that Hipe taught them:
 None was left to lead them on to victory;
 None could follow where his feet had trodden.  
  Then b