Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/38

 Those that I played with, those that nursed me, those that I nursed?

God, and I outliving them! I, the least and the worst—

I, that thought myself crafty, snared by this herd of swine,

In the tortures of hell and desolate, stripped of all that was mine:

All!—my friends and my fathers—the silver heads of yore

That trooped to the council, the children that ran to the open door

Crying with innocent voices and clasping a father's knees!

And mine, my wife—my daughter—my sturdy climber of trees,

Ah, never to climb again!"

Thus in the dusk of the night,

(For clouds rolled in the sky and the moon was swallowed from sight,)

Pacing and gnawing his fists, Rahéro raged by the shore.

Vengeance: that must be his. But much was to do before;

And first a single life to be snatched from a deadly place,

A life, the root of revenge, surviving plant of the race:

And next the race to be raised anew, and the lands of the clan

Repeopled. So Rahéro designed, a prudent man

Even in wrath, and turned for the means of revenge and escape:

A boat to be seized by stealth, a wife to be taken by rape.

Still was the dark lagoon; beyond on the coral wall,

He saw the breakers shine, he heard them bellow and fall.

Alone, on the top of the reef, a man with a flaming brand

Walked, gazing and pausing, a fish-spear poised in his hand. 26