A stranger thou, a stranger I,

Called Broad-edged-Ax:

I’ve read the cloud-omens in heaven.

It curls, it curls! his tail—it curls!

Look, it clings to his buttocks!

Faugh, faugh, faugh, faugh, uff!

What! Ka-haku-ma’a-lani your name!

Answer from heaven, oh Kane!

My song it is done!

If one can trust, the statement of the Hawaiian who communicated the above mele, it represents only a portion of the whole composition, the first canto—if we may so term it—having dropped into the limbo of forgetfulness. The author’s study of the mele lends no countenance to such a view. Like all Hawaiian poetry, this mele wastes no time with introductory flourishes; it plunges at once in medias res.