EMERSON] UNWEITTEK LITEKATUKE OP HAWAII 89 



[Translation] 

 Song 



A burst of smoke from tlie jiit lifts to the skies; 

 Hawaii 's beneatti, birth-land of Keawe; 

 Malama's beach looms before Lohiau, 

 Where landed the chief from Kahiki, 

 5 From a voyage on the blue sea, the dark sea, 

 The foam-mottled sea of Kane, 



What time curled waves of the king-whelming flood. 

 The. sea up-swells, invading the land — 



Lo Kane, outstretched at his ease ! 

 10 Smoke and flame o'ershadow the uplands, 



ronflagration by Laka, the woman 



Hopoe wreathed with flowers of lehua, 



Stringing the pandanus fruit. 



Screw-palms that clash in Pan'-ewa — 

 15 Pan'-ewa, whose groves of lehua 



Are nourished by lava shag, 



Lehua that bourgeons with flame. 



Night, it is night 

 O'er Puna and Hilo ! 

 20 Night from the smoke of my land ! 

 For the people salvation ! 

 But the land is on fire ! 



The Hawaiian who furnished the meles which, in their translated 

 forms, are designated as canto I, canto II, and so on, spoke of them 

 as pale/ and, following his nomenclature, the term has been retained, 

 though more intimate acquaintance with the meles and with the term 

 has shown that the nearest English synonym to correspond with pale 

 would 1)6 the word division. Still, perhaps with a mistaken tender- 

 ness for the word, the author has retained the caption Canto, as a 

 sort of nodding recognition of the old Hawaiian's term — division of 

 a poem. No idea is entertained that the five j)dle above given were 

 composed by the same bard, or that they represent productions from 

 the same individual standpoint. They do, however, breathe a spirit 

 much in common; so that when the old Hawaiian insisted that they 

 are so far related to one another as to form a natural series for reci- 

 tation in the hula, being species of the same genus, as it were, he 

 was not far from the truth. The man's idea seemed to be that they 

 were so closely related that, like beads of harmonious colors and 

 shapes, they might be strung on the same thread without producing a 

 dissonance. 



Of these five poems, or pale (pah-lay), numbers I, II, and IV 

 were uttered in a natural tone of voice, termed kawele, otherwise 

 termed ko^i-honua. The purpose of this style of recitation was to 

 adapt the tone to the necessities of the aged when their ears no longer 



