Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/165

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The Coming of Te Rauparaha.
129
Of the Sun-God through the ranks of darkness,Like the Fire-God rippling through the forest,Like the winter’s silent blight of snowflakes—Lo, the strange outbreak of pallid blossoms—Sweeps this surging wave of stranger-faces,Frothing irresistibly upon us.
“Lo, the Pakeha shall come and conquer;We have failed; the Gods are angry with us.See, the withered autumn of our greatness!
“Old ancestral myths and sacred legendsThat we deemed immortal—(priest and wizardDied, and yet their stories, like a river,Through the long years ran on, ever changeless!)—Shall be buried; and the names long givenTo each hill, and stream, and path and gully,Shall be like a yesterday forgotten,Blown like trembling froth before the sea-breeze.
“And the gods that people all our islands—This great sea of presences immortal,Living, real, alert for charm or evil,Hurrying in every breeze, and haunting,Heavy-winged, the vistas of the forest,Deluging the day-light with their presence,Teeming, flooding, brimming in the shadows—Shall be banished to their spirit-regions,And the world be lorn of gods and lonely.
“And the Maori shall no long time lingerEre, a tardy exile, he shall journeyTo the under-world. Yet he shall neverBreak before this influx, but shall fight onTill, a mangled thing, the tide o’erwhelm him.And my tribe, the might Ngatiraukawa,
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