Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/32

 So, for to-night, sleep here; but king, common, and priest

To-morrow, in order due, shall sit with me in the feast."

Sleepless the live-long night, Hiopa's followers toiled.

The pigs screamed and were slaughtered; the spars of the guest-house oiled,

The leaves spread on the floor. In many a mountain glen

The moon drew shadows of trees on the naked bodies of men

Plucking and bearing fruits; and in all the bounds of the town

Red glowed the cocoanut fires, and were buried and trodden down.

Thus did seven of the yottowas toil with their tale of the clan,

But the eighth wrought with his lads, hid from the sight of man.

In the deeps of the woods they laboured, piling the fuel high

In fagots, the load of a man, fuel seasoned and dry,

Thirsty to seize upon fire and apt to blurt into flame.

And now was the day of the feast. The forests, as morning came,

Tossed in the wind, and the peaks quaked in the blaze of the day

And the cocoanuts showered on the ground, rebounding and rolling away:

A glorious morn for a feast, a famous wind for a fire.

To the hall of feasting Hiopa led them, mother and sire

And maid and babe in a tale, the whole of the holiday throng.

Smiling they came, garlanded green, not dreaming of wrong;

And for every three, a pig, tenderly cooked in the ground,

Waited; and féi, the staff of life, heaped in a mound

For each where he sat;—for each, bananas roasted and raw

Piled with a bountiful hand, as for horses hay and straw 20