[Translation.]
Song
I am smitten with spear of Kane;
Mine eyes with longing scan Koolau;
Behold the love-omen hang o’er the sea.
I dive and come up, dive and come up;
Thus I reach my goal Wai-ko-loa.
The width of plain is a trifle
To the joyful spirit of Kane.
Aye, a husband, and patron is he
To the dance of the bended knee,
In the hall of the stamping feet.
Stamp, till the echo reaches Kahiki;
Still pluck you a wreath by the way
To crown your fondest ambition;
A wreath not marred by the salt wind
That plays with the skirts of Puna.
I long to look eye into eye.
Friendless the house, you away;
Pray who will receive, who welcome,
This guest uninvited from far?
I long for one (soul-deep) gaze,
One night of precious communion;
Such a flower wilts not in the cold—
Cold without, a tumult within.
What bliss, if we two were together!
You are the blest of us twain;
The mat bends under your form.
The thirsty wind, it still rages,
Appeased not with her whole body.
My body is pledged to another.
Crown it, Ku, crown it.
Now the service is free!
Some parts of this mele, which is a love-song, have defied the author’s most strenuous efforts to penetrate their deeper meaning. No Hawaiian consulted has made a pretense of understanding it wholly. The Philistines of the middle of the nineteenth century, into whose hands it fell, have not helped matters by the emendations and interpolations with which they slyly interlarded the text, as if to set before us in a strong light the stigmata of degeneracy from which they were suffering.
The author has discarded from the text two verses which followed verse 28:
Hai’na ia mai ka puana:
Ka wai anapa i ke kala.