MAUI’S FISH
[1]Tongariro! O [1]Taranaki,
Your splendour! your shooting of spear-points, keen, sea-wet, to the sun!
[1]Ruapehu, Kaikoura, Aorangi, Tara-rua, long-arm’d Ruahine!—
Midsummer clouds, curling luminous up from the skyline:
Far-fallen islands of light, summon’d back to the sun:
Soaring [2]Kahawai-birds—
How ye soar’d, shining pinions! straight into the heaven high above you:
How ye shot up, bright Surprises! seizing, possessing the sky:
How firm, great white Clouds, ye took seat!
Pull, Maui! Pull!
For what follows, beneath them?
A waving, a waving and weaving of light and of darkness—
A waving of hands and of hair in the dance!
Lo, is it a garden of kelp?
Is it Night, coming up from the deep, up through fold upon fold of the Sea?
Pull!
Behold, it approaches! it darkens, it pierces the water
—Lo! Lo!
Tree-tops! Lo, waving of branches! Lo, mosses and fern of the forest!
—How sweet on the salt came the breath of the forest, that summer sea-morning!
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