I spurn the thought with disdain Of that pool Alekoki: On the upland lingers the rain And fondly haunts Nuuanu. 5 Sharp was the cold, bootless My waiting up there. I thought thou wert true, Wert loyal to me, Whom thou laids’t under bonds. 10 Take oath now and keep it; This body is sacred to thee, Bound by the word of thy mouth. My heart leaps up at thought Of the pool, pool of Kapena; 15 To me it is fenced, shut off, The water-heads tightly sealed up. The fountains must be a-hoarding, For skies are ever down-pouring; The while I am lodged up aloft, 20 Bestowed in the cleft of a rock. Now, tossed by sea at Mamala, The wind drives wildly the surf; I’m soaked with the scud of the ocean, My body is rough with the rime. 25 But one stout hero and soldier, With heart to face such a storm. Wild scud the clouds, Hurled by the tempest, A tale-bearing wind, 30 That gossips afar. The darkness and storm Are nothing to me. This way and that am I turning, Climbing the hill Ma’e-ma’e, 35 To look on thy charms, dear one, The fragrant buds of the mountain. What perfume breathes from thy body, Such time as to thee I come close, My scarlet bloom of lehua 40 Yields nectar sought by the birds. This mele is said to have been the production of Prince [Page 110] William Lunalilo—afterward King of the Hawaiian islands—and to have been addressed to the Princess Victoria Kamamalu, whom he sought in marriage. Both of them inherited high chief rank, and their offspring, according to Hawaiian usage, would have outranked her brothers, kings Kamehameha IV and V. Selfish and political considerations, therefore, forbade the match, and thereby hangs a tale, the shadow of which darkens this song. Every lover is one part poet; and Lunalilo, even without the love-flame, was more than one part poet. The poem shows the influence of foreign ways and teachings and the pressure of the new environment that had entered Hawaii, in its form, in the moderation of its language and imagery, and in the coherence of its parts; at the same time the spirit of the song and the color of its native imagery mark it as the product of a Polynesian mind.