[Translation.]
Song
Precious the gift of heart’s-ease,
A wreath for the cheerful dame;
So dear to my heart is the breeze
That murmurs, strip for the ocean.
Love slaves for wreaths from Kaana.
I’m blest in your love that reigns here;
It speaks in the fall of a tear—
The choicest thing in one’s life,
This love for a man by his wife—
It has power to shake the whole frame.
Ah, where am I now?
Here, face to your face.
The platitudes of mere sentimentalism, when put into cold print, are not stimulating to the imagination; moods and states of feeling often approaching the morbid, their oral expression needs the reenforcement of voice, tone, countenance, the whole attitude. They are for this reason most difficult of translation and when rendered literally into a foreign speech often become meaningless. The figures employed also, like the watergourds and wine-skins of past generations and of other peoples, no longer appeal to us as familiar objects, but require an effort of the imagination to make them intelligible and vivid to our mental vision. If the translator carries these figures of speech over into his new rendering, they will often demand an explanation on their own account, and will thus fail of their original intent; while if he clothes the thought in some new figure he takes the risk of failing to do justice to the intimate meaning of the original. The force of these remarks will become apparent from an analysis of the prominent figures of speech that occur in the mele.
Mele
He inoa no ka Lani,
No Náhi-éna-éna;
A ka luna o wahine.
Ho’i ka ena a ka makani;
Noho ka la’i i ka malino—
Makani ua ha-aó;
Ko ke au i hala, ea.
Punawai o Maná, [392]
Wai ola na ke kupa
A ka ilio naná,
Hae, nanahu i ke kai;
Ehu kai nána ka pua,
Ka pua o ka iliau,
Ka ohai o Mapépe, [393]
Ka moena we’u-we’u,
I ulana ia e ke A’e,
Ka naku loloa.
Hea mai o Kawelo-hea, [394]
Nawai la, e, ke kapu?
No Náhi-éna-éna.
Ena na pua i ka wai,
Wai au o Holei.
Footnote 392:[ (return) ] Punawai o Maná. A spring of water at Honuapo, Hawaii, which bubbled up at such a level that the ocean covered it at high tide.
Footnote 393:[ (return) ] Ka ohai o Mapépe. A beautiful flowering shrub, also spoken of as ka ohai o Papi’o-huli, said to have been brought from Kahiki by Namaka-o-kaha’i.
Footnote 394:[ (return) ] Kawelo-hea. A blowhole or spouting horn, also at Honuapo, through which the ocean at certain times sent up a column of spray or of water. After the volcanic disturbance of 1868 this spouting horn ceased action. The rending force of the earthquakes must have broken up and choked the subterranean channel through which the ocean had forced its way.