Noa Noa Page 8

  Above all, they have taught me to know myself better; they have told me the deepest truth.

  Was this thy secret, thou mysterious world? Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature. I have become better for having understood and having loved thy human soul—a flower which has ceased to bloom and whose fragrance no one henceforth will breathe.

  As I left the quay, at the moment of going on board, I saw Tehura for the last time.

  She had wept through many nights. Now she sat worn-out and sad, but calm, on a stone with her legs hanging down and her strong, little feet touching the soiled water.

  The flower which she had put behind the ear in the morning had fallen wilted upon her knee.

  Here and there were others like her, tired, silent, gloomy, watching without a thought the thick smoke of the ship which was bearing all of us—lovers of a day—far away, forever.

  From the bridge of the ship as we were moving farther and farther away, it seemed to us that with the telescope we could still read on their lips these ancient Maori verses,

  Ye gentle breezes of the south and east

  That join in tender play above my head,

  Hasten to the neighboring isle.

  There you will find in the shadow of his favorite tree,

  Him who has abandoned me.

  Tell him that you have seen me weep.

  THE END

  1 The girdle of the natives, their only article of attire.

  2 This Mahoüi seems to be confused with Taaroa, and also with Roüa who created the stars. They are perhaps different names for the same God.

  3 It is impossible to misunderstand the symbolic significance of this rite. It is clearly prohibition of cannibalism.

  4 It is to be feared that the missionaries by whom the record of the traditions has been handed down to us have calumniated the ancestors of their flock on this point as on many others for a purpose which can easily be divined. But in spite of all that is brutal, grotesque, and even repulsive, one must agree that, perhaps, this supreme rite did not lack a peculiar beauty.

  5 This word mara is found in the language of the Buddhists, where it signifies death, and by extension sin.

  6 This legend is one of the numerous Maori explanations of the Deluge.