Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/163

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The Coming of Te Rauparaha.
127
There Waiora’s living waters Purge the battle stain;There the ancient angry daughters Lave and grow again.
You’ll never break the prison golden,— Never, late or soon,Rona, Rona, sister olden,— Rona in the moon!

Jessie Mackay.

LXXVIII.

The Coming of Te Rauparaha.

Blue, the wreaths of smoke, like drooping bannersFrom the flaming battlements of sunsetHung suspended; and within his whareHipe, last of Ngatiraukawa’s chieftains,Lay a-dying! Ringed about his death-bed,Like a palisade of carven figures,Stood the silent people of the village—Warriors and women of his hapu—Waiting. Then a sudden spilth of sunlightSplashed upon the mountain-peak above them,And it blossomed redly like a rata.
With his people and the twilight pausing;Withering to death in regal patience,Taciturn and grim, lay Hipe dying.
Shuddering and green, a little lizardMade a ripple through the whare’s darkness,
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