Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/61

 No more shall Rua return; no more as the evening ends,

To crowded eyes of welcome, to the reaching hands of friends."

All day long from the High-place the drums and the singing came,

And the even fell, and the sun went down, a wheel of flame;

And night came gleaning the shadows and hushing the sounds of the wood;

And silence slept on all, where Rua sorrowed and stood.

But still from the shore of the bay the sound of the festival rang,

And still the crowd in the High-place danced and shouted and sang.

Now over all the isle terror was breathed abroad

Of shadowy hands from the trees and shadowy snares in the sod;

And before the nostrils of night, the shuddering hunter of men

Hurried, with beard on shoulder, back to his lighted den.

"Taheia, here to my side!"—"Rua, my Rua, you!"

And cold from the clutch of terror, cold with the damp of the dew,

Taheia, heavy of hair, leaped through the dark to his arms;

Taheia leaped to his clasp, and was folded in from alarms.

"Rua, beloved, here, see what your love has brought;

Coming—alas! returning—swift as the shuttle of thought;

Returning, alas! for to-night, with the beaten drum and the voice,

In the shine of many torches must the sleepless clan rejoice;

And Taheia the well-descended, the daughter of chief and priest,

Taheia must sit in her place in the crowded bench of the feast." 49