EMERSON] UNWRl'l-rEN LrPERATURE OF HAWAII 217 



I Transliilioii ] 



Lo, the rain, the rain ! 



The rain is apimtacliins; 



The dance-Iiall is niiirliy. 



The great hall of 1 ,0110. 

 5 Listen! its mountain walls 



Are stunned with the clatter, 



As when in October, 



Heaven's thunderbolts shatter. 



Then follows Welehn, 

 10 The month of the Pleiads. 



Scanty the work then done. 



Save as one's driven. 



Spur conies with the sun, 



When day has arisen. 

 If) Now comes the Heaven-born; 



The whole land doth shake, 



As with an earthquake ; 



Sleep quits then my bed : 



How shall this maw be fed ! 

 20 Great maw of tlie shark — 



Eyes that gleam in the dark 



Of the boiuidless sea ! 



Rare the king's visits to me. 



All is free, all is free I 



If the author of this Hawaiian idyl sought to adapt its descriptive 

 imagery to the features of any particular landscape, it would almost 

 seem as if he had in view the very region in which Kauikeaouli 

 found himself in the year 1847 as he listened to the mele of this 

 unknown Hawaiian Theocritus. ITnder the spell of this poem, one 

 is transported to the amphitheater of Mauna-wili, a valley separated 

 from Waimanalo only by a rampart of hills. At one's back are the 

 abrupt walls of Konahuanui; at the right, and encroaching so as 

 almost to shut in the front, stands the knife-edge of Olomana ; to 

 the left range the furzy hills of Ulamawao; while directly to the 

 front, looking north, winds the green valley, whose w'aters, before 

 reaching the ocean, spread out into the fish-ponds and duck swamps 

 of Kailua. It would seem as if this must have been the very picture 

 the idyllic poet had in mind. This smiling, yet rock-walled, amphi- 

 theater Avas the vast dance-hall of Lono — Halau loa o Lono (verse 

 4)- — whose walls were deafened, stunned {pa-d-a, Averse G), by the 

 tumult and uproar of the multitude that always followed in the 

 wake of a king, a multitude whose night-long revels banished sleep : 

 Moe pono ole ko'u po (verse 17). The poet seems to be thinking of 

 this same hungry multitude in verse 18, Na mho ai halakala, literally 

 the teeth that tear the food; also when he speaks of the Niuhi (verse 

 19), a mythical shark, the glow of whose eyes was said to be visible 

 for a great distance in the ocean, A mau i he hai loa (verse 20). 



