Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/18

 So spoke on the beach the mother, and counselled the wiser thing.

For Rahéro stirred in the country and secretly mined the king.

Nor were the signals wanting of how the leaven wrought,

In the cords of obedience loosed and the tributes grudgingly brought.

And when last to the temple of Oro the boat with the victim sped,

And the priest uncovered the basket and looked on the face of the dead,

Trembling fell upon all at sight of an ominous thing,

For there was the aito1 dead, and he of the house of the king.

So spake on the beach the mother, matter worthy of note,

And wattled a basket well, and chose a fish from the boat;

And Támatéa the pliable shouldered the basket and went,

And travelled, and sang as he travelled, a lad that was well content.

Still the way of his going was round by the roaring coast,

Where the ring of the reef is broke and the trades run riot the most.

On his left, with smoke as of battle, the billows battered the land;

Unscalable, turretted mountains rose on the inner hand.

And cape, and village, and river, and vale, and mountain above,

Each had a name in the land for men to remember and love;

And never the name of a place, but lo! a song in its praise:

Ancient and unforgotten, songs of the earlier days,

That the elders taught to the young, and at night, in the full of the moon,

Garlanded boys and maidens sang together in tune.

Támatéa the placable went with a lingering foot;

He sang as loud as a bird, he whistled hoarse as a flute; 6