The Pacific commercial advertiser., 1893-01-14

FROM HANALEI TO HAENA

Written for the z. c. ADyERTIsER.1
BY ranges of verdure clad bills,
And stretches of grass covered
plain,
Where long streaming ribbons of riIls
Kept full by the ripples of rain
Drip afar from the forested keeps,
Like smoke down the face of the
range
Where the bloom on the tapestried
sleeps
Is unyexed by the winter of change
Swiftly riding o 'er grass covered leas,
On the edge of an emerald strand
By the margin of amethyst seas,
With fringeS of shingle and "nd
I ,W.Garf ridges are barren and bare,
Save where cacti and lauhalas
bloom;
And abroad on the hot summer air;
Shedding wealth of the rarest per-
fume.
80 on to slow running stream
Where flowers Chamber over the
bank;
BY the mouth of vale - like a
Where the sedges grow serried and
rank,
Where the waters run silent and dark
In the channel with never a ford
Where the scow seemed as old as the
ark,
And a dusky-browed charon was
lord.
In the valley the living green fires
Burned bright in the tropical noon;
With the sheen of the luminous
spires
Mirrored back by the cleaning la
goOn,
Riding on to the mouths of the caves
We dismount by the hazardous
sleeps,
Where the roar of the turbulent
waves
Ringeth loud in the cavern's deeps.
Old traditions and stories are told,
How in absence of life giving rains, |
Two strangers in ages of old,
Seeking water to meisten the |
plains,
Dug the caves in the face of the hills, |
And that after long cycles of toll,
Sent abroad the sweet rivers and rills |
TO gladden. the sun-parched soil.
Triple caves pierce the heart of the
sleeps,
And the daylight doth never illume
The dark and inscrutable deeps
And the paths of ineffable gloom.
In one of them kings of Kauai
Who have gone to the ultimate
shore,
In the heart of the dark mountain lie
And dragon keeps guard at the
door.
And the legend relates that pile
OF the cloaks and the helmets of
old,
Lie buried afar in the isle,
That could never be purchased for
gold.
In another, beneath the dark dome,
Neither eddy or ripple of rill,
Only geld green patches of foam
On pool lying stagnant and still.
Then we enter and stand with amaze
By the pallid green face of the pond;
In the third one, and strive in the
haze
To pierce through the darkness be-
yOnd;
Where the waters in blackness of
night
Sullen roll through the riffs in the
cave,
And the natives, with torches alight,
Row us out on the Stygian wave.
In a moment we slip with our bark
Where the daylight gives place to
the gloom,
Where the waters glide sunless and
dark
In the silence and hush OF the tomb.
The CLEANS through the darkness pro-
From the torches Gehenna like
glare
On the walls of the cavern around
Throw shadows that startle and
scare.
Shadows thrown by the ruddy-red
O'er the half-naked powers that fit,
Are unearthly and weird, and they
Like ghouls from the bottomless
pit.
Inspirations of woe and of fear
All our speech and our senses be-
numb;
\ word never spoken of cheer,
For the rowed and the rowers are
dumb.
But we thankfully came to halt
Where shallOp no further might
sail;
Turned back through the dinr-lighted
vault,
And fled from the spirits of bale,
That seemed always around and
anear;
And came back to the sun-lighted
shore
With impressions of terror and fear,
That are part of our lives evermore.
CHARLES II. EWART.
Dalbeattie, Scotland, Nov, 1892.