WAR-SONG. 
201 
That Uura king at Tarapati may behold it. 
O Hiro, to whom shall I this war-song declare, 
I declare it to the band of the keel, 
The band of brave fighters who never fled, 
The keel sustains the ship, warriors each other, 
To the two pupils for whom the life of the stone battle-axe 
was created, 
To the sky producer, or growing sky, 
The clear sky, the spreading sky, 
The sky above, sky even piled, 
The treaty nursed in the lap, 
Before the face of the armies of Rai and Roo. 
And great Ru, who in Mauarahu lifted the heavens, 
Gods shall enter, and there shall be darkness, 
There shall be the blackness of darkness ; 
Our onset shall be as the rolling sea, 
Our conflict the struggle of travail, 
Let it be as the sea in a storm, 
As the sea raised by sudden tempest, 
Roo, the first-born god, shall cause destruction: 
The heads of men shall be caught as fish in the net. 
Shout the name of Ro on the right hand and the left, 
Thus shall we the heads of men entangle. 
Climb the rock half way to its summit, and return, 
Climb the rock Fataufatau ; 
Enter the narrow cleft, whence it is high above, and deep 
below, 
And weep as did the mother of Tafai, • 
She fled to the long mountain in Romaroma;* 
Surrounded with war, she and her son fled, 
The younger brother may climb the bread-fruit Maau, 
Or fly to the elder brother. 
The spear of Tuhorotua has been here : 
Splendid his vestments, 
As the east wind is the speech of the timorous, 
Who would arrange for long and pleasant day, 
Short be the darkness, a single night, 
Let the toughness of the pia and tevet 
And of the chosen warriors be shown. 
At the root of the cocoa-tree I will wait, 
Till a branch:}: shall spring forth, 
To feed the visitors of divine Tumataroa in Ai-tupo,^ 
* A mountain near Borabora. + Two native plants. t A good 
victim. § A temple in Raiatea, to which the first taken or slain in battle 
was conveyed. 
