MAUI’S FISH
What wits he of division? What recks he of custom, time-honour’d?
What does a young man know?
His fish! Was it not our canoe?
Come!” They trampled his words underfoot, and leapt out on the beaches.
“This my land!” shouted one, and he set up his paddle upon it,
“This to me!” “This to me!” cried they all;
They wrangled and strove.
But the land, this Te Ika a Maui,
Beholding their impudence, seeing their greed and their quarrel,
Laugh’d—for they were not her master—
Laugh’d! Lo, she wrinkled her skin, shook her sides, laugh’d wide with her lips....
“Ha, ha!” and “Ha, ha!”....
Till Maui, returning, instead of a smooth land, and Brothers in waiting,
Found this fellow, sprawl’d on the top of a sudden-rear’d mountain:
That, deep in a gully new-cloven: this other, head-first in a swamp;
And all abash’d and ashamed.
Louder then laugh’d Maui the Fisher.
“Ha, ha! Well done, the land!
Ha, Tangaroa, well done!
My Fish, my Fish, is alive!”
This is the tale of the Fishing of Maui,
Of the birth of New Zealand, Te Ika a Maui.
Hear yet!
I speak but one little word more.
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