MAUI’S FISH
Of tussock sun-gilded, of headlands proclaiming the sun:
Tattoo’d with blue—behold [1]Waikato! lo [1]Wanganui!
Ey’d with quick eyes—[2]Wakatipu, and over there [2]Taupo:
Plumed with sky-feathers, with clouds and with snow: begirt with the mat of the Ocean
Border’d with foam, with fine fringes of sand, with breast-jewels of clear-coloured pebbles:—
Up it sprang, out it burst from the folds of the foam, out it stood;
Bare-bright on the jewel-bright Sea:—
A new Land!
There it stood!
And the Sea, now at rest, laid her down with her arms round about it,
Thrusting the tongue and the touches of love ’gainst the limbs of the living,
Caressing her newly-born, laughing and singing for joy.
And, up-coiling his line, disentangling his fish-hook, now Maui laugh’d also—
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Maui the Fisher,
“Behold, I have caught me a Fish!”
Enough—Even so!
With a hook of the Dead, with a bait of the Living,
With the thought of his head, with the blood of his body, the sweat of his heart,
With pangs and with laughter, with labour and loss,
He truly had caught him a fish—the canoe was aground—
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