Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/33

 Are stacked in a stable; and fish, the food of desire,13

And plentiful vessels of sauce, and breadfruit gilt in the fire;—

And kava was common as water. Feasts have there been ere now,

And many, but never a feast like that of the folk of Vaiau.

All day long they ate with the resolute greed of brutes,

And turned from the pigs to the fish, and again from the fish to the fruits,

And emptied the vessels of sauce, and drank of the kava deep;

Till the young lay stupid as stones, and the strongest nodded to sleep.

Sleep that was mighty as death and blind as a moonless night

Tethered them hand and foot; and their souls were drowned, and the light

Was cloaked from their eyes. Senseless together, the old and the young,

The fighter deadly to smite and the prater cunning of tongue.

The woman wedded and fruitful, inured to the pangs of birth,

And the maid that knew not of kisses, blindly sprawled on the earth.

From the hall Hiopa the king and his chiefs came stealthily forth.

Already the sun hung low and enlightened the peaks of the north;

But the wind was stubborn to die and blew as it blows at morn,

Showering the nuts in the dusk, and e'en as a banner is torn,

High on the peaks of the island, shattered the mountain cloud.

And now at once, at a signal, a silent, emulous crowd

Set hands to the work of death, hurrying to and fro,

Like ants, to furnish the fagots, building them broad and low, 21