EMEKSON] UNWRITTEN LITERATURE OF HAWAII 115 



Hele mai nei kou aloha 

 A lalawe i ko'u nui kino, 

 Au i liookohu ai, 

 10 E kiiko i ka manao. 



Kuhi no paha oe no Hopoe '^ 

 Nei leliiia au i ka haua ohi ai. 



[Translation] 

 Song 



Malna, fetch water of love, 

 Give drink to this niamaue bud. 

 The birds, they are singing ecstatic, 

 Sipping Panaevva's nectared lehua, 

 5 Beside themselves with the fragrance 

 Exhaled from the garden Ohele. 

 Your love comes to me a tornado ; 

 It has rapt away my whole body, 

 The heart you once sealed as your own, 

 10 There planted the seed of desire. 



Thought you 'twas the tree of Hopoe, 

 This tree, whose bloom you would pluck? 



"VVliat is the argument of this poem? A passion-stricken swain, 

 or perhaps a woman, cries to Malua to bring relief to his love-smart, 

 to give drink to the parched mamane buds — emblems of human feel- 

 ing. In contrast to his own distress, he points to the birds carol- 

 ing in the trees, reveling in the nectar of lehua bloom, intoxicated 

 with the scent of nature's garden. What answer does the lovelorn 

 swain receive from the nymph he adores? In lines 11 and 12 she 

 banteringly asks him if he took her to be like the traditional lehua 

 tree of Hopoe, of which men stood in awe as a sort of divinity, not 

 daring to pluck its flowers? It is as if the woman had asked — ^if the 

 poefs meaning is rightly interpreted — '' Did you really think me 

 plighted to vestal vows, a tree whose bloom man was forbidden to 

 pluck? " 



'^ Hopoe was a beautiful young woman, a friend of Hiiaka, and was persecuted by Pele 

 owing to jealousy. One of the forms in which she as a divinity showed herself was as a 

 lehua tree in full bloom. 



