The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-09-16

back in terror Lo: a pillar held
By fiery hands seemed to smte the stars,
Upreared a thousand feet of solid flame
Piercing the midnight of hundred miles
With shafts of day. Behold, palm-groves sway,
And smoking fall, while the hot rolls
Its fury downward; swift mountain stream,
Broad some mighty plains,
In ripping fre-wth voice of hurricane:
A flaming cataract that sweeps death
Man and all creatures-leaping o
With serpent hiss, in shock that rends the waves!
o Pele, goddess of the hre-cro isles
Clothed with the lightnings of unnumbered years,
Lives there the mortal who would brave thine ire?
Now Mauna Loa paled before the sun:
It's lofty dome against the azure sky
Brought earth and heaven near the peaceful heights
Where winds disturb not near to hre-built halls
Where nature languished in convusive strife.
The dread Kilauea from lower range
Its seething caldrons opened the day,
And Knocked its glory; and dire Hae-mau-mau,
The House of Everlasting Fire" named
OF boar tradition. spread its gates abroad
Afame with spendor
Peles priestess came
With demon glare. gaunt, gard clad in robe
The fires had fringed, shrieked curses till
The painting smoke-clouds sweeping downward seemed
To breathe her fury.
Kapolani drew
Her shuddering people to the crater's brink
Where the fierce goddess sum bered wrapped in fire.
Now would she prove to all the craven tribes
AS Carmels height Elijah Knocked
The priests of Baal-that Jehovah reigns;
And down the dread abyss she led the way;
Past blackened walls that mirrored deeper gloom
Past rocks white with breath of former heats,
And yellow sulphur streams, and rivers caught
In flaming whirlpools and then chilled stone:
Ger the solid lake. through shivered fortress wild;
While darker, denser grew the air. and hot
The fumes, and scorching to her feet the path
The steaming earth hardened her tread;
Or chasm broad rugged rent opposed
Her progress while from governed depths there came
Fierce sultry blasts that wthered all the strength
At molten sea,
That flashed and quivered in thousand
And rolled its flames with thunders. Never tongue
Can tell the sight; for far eye could
The fountains of the fiery deep 1oosed
Now leaping to the couds-in rudy rain
MISUNDERSTANDING downward in force
lie Ike the M
OF lightnings multitudinous;
Fast cooled the bubbing flood silver
With roseate hues a tracked the flame;
Quick broken when in wild volcanic rage
CLEAN, the surging arose.
And whelmed the topping eli ifs with living fire.
So, restless heaved this fla ming
With flaming pail encompassed with sound
OF throbbng earthquake from the depths unknown
The dusky queen stood in the urd light
And gazed nor feared. The branch long dedicate
To Pele in her hand she held broke,
And not first the customary gift,
But ate the sacred berries and defed
The mmemorial bond-while yonder
Lashed the dread throne of Pele in their sight.
Jehovah is God" she cried these fires
He kindled; vain the wrath and vain the power
OF dreaded Pele! I defy her spells.
Praise, all We isles the great Jehovahs Lowell
Then from her lips there rose the liquid strains
OF simple hymn-in tongue unk nown to fame.
burdened with the theme tn angels sing
And in the pauses of the thun der-voced
Fire pillows, it's clear cadence fell in notes
OF faith victorious.
Her people heard
And caught the holy song emancpate
In sudden freedom. Pele gave sign,
Nor rent the earth, flashed her anger forth,
Her phantom terrors less than airy smoke
That vanished. Then, far down the island hills
There went the story of her vanqushed
w. STEVE