| MAMUA, when our laughter ends, | |
| And hearts and bodies, brown as white, | |
| Are dust about the doors of friends, | |
| Or scent ablowing down the night, | |
| Then, oh! then, the wise agree, | 5 |
| Comes our immortality. | |
| Mamua, there waits a land | |
| Hard for us to understand. | |
| Out of time, beyond the sun, | |
| All are one in Paradise, | 10 |
| You and Pupure are one, | |
| And Taü, and the ungainly wise. | |
| There the Eternals are, and there | |
| The Good, the Lovely, and the True, | |
| And Types, whose earthly copies were | 15 |
| The foolish broken things we knew; | |
| There is the Face, whose ghosts we are; | |
| The real, the never-setting Star; | |
| And the Flower, of which we love | |
| Faint and fading shadows here; | 20 |
| Never a tear, but only Grief; | |
| Dance, but not the limbs that move; | |
| Songs in Song shall disappear; | |
| Instead of lovers, Love shall be; | |
| For hearts, Immutability; | 25 |
| And there, on the Ideal Reef, | |
| Thunders the Everlasting Sea! | |
| |
| And my laughter, and my pain, | |
| Shall home to the Eternal Brain. | |
| And all lovely things, they say, | 30 |
| Meet in Loveliness again; | |
| Miri’s laugh, Teïpo’s feet, | |
| And the hands of Matua, | |
| Stars and sunlight there shall meet, | |
| Coral’s hues and rainbows there, | 35 |
| And Teüra’s braided hair; | |
| And with the starred tiare’s white, | |
| And white birds in the dark ravine, | |
| And flamboyants ablaze at night, | |
| And jewels, and evening’s after-green, | 40 |
| And dawns of pearl and gold and red, | |
| Mamua, your lovelier head! | |
| And there’ll no more be one who dreams | |
| Under the ferns, of crumbling stuff, | |
| Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems, | 45 |
| All time-entangled human love. | |
| And you’ll no longer swing and sway | |
| Divinely down the scented shade, | |
| Where feet to Ambulation fade, | |
| And moons are lost in endless Day. | 50 |
| How shall we wind these wreaths of ours, | |
| Where there are neither heads nor flowers? | |
| Oh, Heaven’s Heaven!—but we’ll be missing | |
| The palms, and sunlight, and the south; | |
| And there’s an end, I think, of kissing, | 55 |
| When our mouths are one with Mouth.… | |
| |
| Taü here, Mamua, | |
| Crown the hair, and come away! | |
| Hear the calling of the moon, | |
| And the whispering scents that stray | 60 |
| About the idle warm lagoon. | |
| Hasten, hand in human hand, | |
| Down the dark, the flowered way, | |
| Along the whiteness of the sand, | |
| And in the water’s soft caress, | 65 |
| Wash the mind of foolishness, | |
| Mamua, until the day. | |
| Spend the glittering moonlight there | |
| Pursuing down the soundless deep | |
| Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair, | 70 |
| Or floating lazy, half-asleep. | |
| Dive and double and follow after, | |
| Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call, | |
| With lips that fade, and human laughter | |
| And faces individual, | 75 |
| Well this side of Paradise!… | |
There’s little comfort in the wise.
PAPEETE, February 1914. | |
