EMEKSON] UNWRITTEN LITEEATUEE OF HAWAII 83 



[Translation! 

 Song 



Metliinks it is you, leaf plueljetl from Love's tree, 



You niayliap, that stirs my aftectiou. 



Tliere's a tremulous glance of the eye, 



The thought she might chance yet to come : 

 5 But who then would greet her with sougV 



Your day has flown, your vision of her — 



A time this for gnawing the heart. 



I've plunged just now in deep waters : 



Oh the strife and vexation of soul ! 

 10 No mortal goes scathless of love. 



A wife thou estranged, I a husband estranged, 



Mere husks to be cast to the swine.** 



Look, the swarming of fish at the weir ! 



Their feeding grounds on the reef 

 15 Are waving with mosses abundant. 



Thou art the woman, that one your man — 



At her coming who'll greet her with song? 



Her returning, who shall console? 



This song almost explains itself. It is the soliloquy of a lover 

 estranged from his mistress. Imagination is alive in eye and ear to 

 everything that may bring tidings of her, even of her imhoped-for 

 return. Sometimes he speaks as if addressing the woman who has 

 gone from him, or he addresses himself, or he personifies some one 

 who speaks to him, as in the sixth line : " Your day has flown, 



* * * 59 



The memory of past vexation and anguish extorts the philosophic 

 remark, " No mortal goes scathless of love." He gives over the 

 past, seeks consolation in a new attachment — he dives, Zw'w, into the 

 great ocean, " deep waters," of love, at least in search of love. The 

 old self (selves), the old love, he declares to be only aliialu, empty 

 husks. 



He — it is evidently a man — sets forth the wealth of comfort, opu- 

 lence, that surrounds him in his new-found peace. The scene, being 

 laid in the land Kailua, Oahu — the place to which the enchanted 

 tree Maka-Ui ^ was carried long ago, from which time its waters 

 abounded in fish — fish are naturally the symbol of the opulence that 

 now bless his life. But, in spite of the new-found peace and pros- 

 perity that attend him, there is a lonely corner in his heart; the 

 old question echoes in its vacuum, " Wlio'll greet her with song ? 

 * * * who shall console? " 



" In the original, He man aluulu kn ha'i e lawe, literally " Some skins for another to 

 take." 



^ Maka-lei. (See note h, p. 17.) 



