HIIAKA AND LOHIAU … A REUNION
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Emerson, Nathaniel Bright
O ka wai mukiki a’ala lehua o ka manu,
O ka awa ili lena i ka uka o Ka-li’u,
O ka manu aha’i kau-laau o Puna:—
Aia i ka laau ka awa o Puna.
Mapu wale mai ana no ia’u kona aloha,
Hoolana mai ana ia’u, e moe, e;
A e moe no, e-e-e.
And now comes the unexpected antiphone by Lohiau:
O Puna, lehua ula i ka papa;
I ula i ka papa ka lehua o Puna:
Ke kui ia mai la e na wahine o ka Lua:
Mai ka Lua a’u i hele mai nei, mai Kilauea.
Aloha Kilauea, ka aina a ke aloha.
TRANSLATION
Nectar for gods, honeyed lehua;
Food for the birds, bloom of lehua;
Pang of love, the yellow-barked awa,
Quaffed by the dryads in Puna’s wilds;
Bitter the sweet of Puna’s tree-awa.
His love wafts hither to me from dreamland—
The cry of the soul for love’s fond touch;
And who would forbid the soul’s demand!
Antiphone
Puna’s plain takes the color of scarlet—
Red as heart’s blood the bloom of lehua.
The nymphs of the Pit string hearts in a wreath:
Oh the pangs of the Pit, Kilauea!
Still turns my heart to Kilauea.
We must leave to the imagination of the reader the scene that occurred when Lohiau, the man twice called back from the dead, leaves his hiding place and comes into Hiiaka’s encircling arms lovingly extended to him.
This was accomplished the reunion of Hiiaka and Lohiau, and thus it came to pass that these two human streams of characters so different, in defiance of powerful influences that had long held them apart, were, at length, turned into one channel—that of the man, not wholly earthly, but leavened with the possibility of vast spiritual attainment under the tonic discipline of affliction; that of the woman, self-reliant, resourceful, yet acutely in need of affection; human and practical, yet feeling after the divine, conscious of daily commerce with the skies; and, yet, in spite of all, in bondage to that universal law which gives to the smaller and weaker body the power to introduce a perturbation into the orbit of the greater and to pull it away from its proper trajectory.
The old order has passed away, the order in which the will of Pele has ruled almost supreme, regardless of the younger, the human, race which is fast peopling the land that was hers in the making. Hitherto, surrounded by a cohort of willing servants ready at all times to sacrifice themselves to her caprice,—behold, a new spirit has leavened the whole mass, a spirit of dissent from the supreme selfishness of the Vulcan goddess, and the foremost dissident of them all is the obedient little sister who was first in her devotion to Pele, the warm-hearted girl whom we still love to call Hiiaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele.
THE END
Source notes
1 A calabash, often covered with a net, used by a fisherman to hold his spare hooks and lines and, by the traveler, his belongings. ↑