Thou’rt plucked from us
As the flax-shoot is plucked from the bush
And held aloft among the mourners.[1]
Thou that wert our boast, our pride,
Whose name has soared on high,
Thy people now are lone and desolate.
Indeed thou’rt gone, O Friend!
Thou’rt vanished like our ocean-fleet of old—
The famed canoes, Atamira, Hotutaihirangi,
Taiopuapua, Te Roro-tua-maheni,
The Araiteuru! and Nuku-tai-memeha,
The canoe that drew up from the sea
This solid land.
Wi Pere began again, and all his people chanted with him:—
Affliction’s deepest gloom
Enwraps this house,
For in it Seddon lies
Whose death eats out our hearts.
’Twas he to whom we closest clung
In days gone by.
O whispering north-west breeze,
Blow fair for me,
Waft me to Poneke,
And take me to the friend I loved
In days gone by.
O peoples all and tribes,
Raise the loud cry of grief,
For the Ship of Fate has passed
Port Jackson’s distant cape,
And on the all-destroying sea
Our great one died.
The final scene in the “tangi-hanga” was a dramatic climax. Both Maoris and Europeans had been wrought up to a deep feeling by the songs, the high-pitched cries of farewells, and
- ↑ The reference to the plucking of the flax-shoot is in connection with the methods of divination practised in ancient time by the tohungas, or priests, before a war-party set out on the enemy’s trail. The reader of the omen plucked the “rito” or central shoot of a flax-plant. If the end broke off evenly and straight, it was a good sign, presaging an easy victory. If it was jagged and gapped, or torn, that was a “tohu kino,” or evil omen, a warning that a leading chief of the war party would be slain. The ancient canoes named were some of those which brought the ancestors of the East Coast tribes to New Zealand from the islands of Polynesia. The Araiteuru is the sailing canoe which was wrecked on the beach near Moeraki six centuries ago. Nuku-tai-memeha is one of the mythological names of the canoe from which, in the days of remote antiquity, the great god Maui fished up the North Island of New Zealand.
