Songs of Travel | Page 9

charm of beauty. Most of all,
For your light foot
I wearied, and your knock
That was the glad reveille of my day.
Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
At morning through the
portico you pass,
One moment glance, where by the pillared wall

Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
Sit now
unworshipped, the rude monument
Of faiths forgot and races
undivined:
Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
The priest, the
victim, and the songful crowd,
The blaze of the blue noon, and that
huge voice,
Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.
As far as these
from their ancestral shrine,
So far, so foreign, your divided friends

Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.
Apemama.
XXXVII - THE HOUSE OF TEMBINOKA
[At my departure from the island of Apemama, for which you will look
in vain in most atlases, the King and I agreed, since we both set up to
be in the poetical way, that we should celebrate our separation in verse.

Whether or not his Majesty has been true to his bargain, the laggard
posts of the Pacific may perhaps inform me in six months, perhaps not
before a year. The following lines represent my part of the contract, and
it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain a
civilised audience. Nothing throughout has been invented or
exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author's muse has
confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts or legends that I saw or
heard during two months' residence upon the island. - R. L. S.]
ENVOI
Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards;
And you in your
tongue and measure, I in mine,
Our now division duly solemnise.

Unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one:
The strains unlike, and
how unlike their fate!
You to the blinding palace-yard shall call
The
prefect of the singers, and to him,
Listening devout, your valedictory
verse
Deliver; he, his attribute fulfilled,
To the island chorus hand
your measures on,
Wed now with harmony: so them, at last,
Night
after night, in the open hall of dance,
Shall thirty matted men, to the
clapped hand,
Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate!
Paper and
print alone shall honour mine.
THE SONG
LET now the King his ear arouse
And toss the bosky ringlets from his
brows,
The while, our bond to implement,
My muse relates and
praises his descent.
I
Bride of the shark, her valour first I sing
Who on the lone seas
quickened of a King.
She, from the shore and puny homes of men,

Beyond the climber's sea-discerning ken,
Swam, led by omens; and
devoid of fear,
Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near.
She
gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale,
The simple sea was void of
isle or sail -
Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared -
When the

deep bubbled and the brute appeared.
But she, secure in the decrees
of fate,
Made strong her bosom and received the mate,
And, men
declare, from that marine embrace
Conceived the virtues of a stronger
race.
II
Her stern descendant next I praise,
Survivor of a thousand frays: -

In the hall of tongues who ruled the throng;
Led and was trusted by
the strong;
And when spears were in the wood,
Like a tower of
vantage stood: -
Whom, not till seventy years had sped,
Unscarred
of breast, erect of head,
Still light of step, still bright of look,
The
hunter, Death, had overtook.
III
His sons, the brothers twain, I sing,
Of whom the elder reigned a
King.
No Childeric he, yet much declined
From his rude sire's
imperious mind,
Until his day came when he died,
He lived, he
reigned, he versified.
But chiefly him I celebrate
That was the pillar
of the state,
Ruled, wise of word and bold of mien,
The peaceful
and the warlike scene;
And played alike the leader's part
In lawful
and unlawful art.
His soldiers with emboldened ears
Heard him
laugh among the spears.
He could deduce from age to age
The web
of island parentage;
Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance,
For
any festal circumstance:
And fitly fashion oar and boat,
A palace or
an armour coat.
None more availed than he to raise
The strong,
suffumigating blaze,
Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,
Upon the
untrodden windward shore
Of the isle, beside the beating main,
To
cure the sickly and constrain,
With muttered words and waving rods,

The gibbering and the whistling gods.
But he, though thus with
hand and head
He ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,
And thus
in virtue and in might
Towered to contemporary sight -
Still in
fraternal faith and love,
Remained below to reach above,
Gave and

obeyed the apt command,
Pilot and vassal of the land.
IV
My Tembinok' from men like these
Inherited his palaces,
His right
to rule, his powers of mind,
His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined.
Stern
bearer of the sword and whip,
A master passed in mastership,
He
learned, without the spur of need,
To write, to cipher, and to read;

From all that touch on his prone shore
Augments his treasury of lore,

Eager in age as erst in youth
To catch an art, to learn a truth,
To
paint on the internal page
A clearer picture of the age.
His age, you
say? But ah, not so!
In his lone