Moe oe a ala mai; Nana iho oe i kou pono. 15 Hai’na ia ka puana: Keiki noho pali o Hamakua; A waka-waka, a waka-waka. [Translation.] _Song_ It was in Hamakua; I sat in a grove of Pandanus, A stranger at my arrival, A rock was my shelter from rain. 5 I found it a wearisome wait, Cautiously shifting about. There’s a canny son of the cliff That has five buds to his hand. You shall twine me a wreath of due length, 10 A wreath to encircle my love, Whilst you hold desire in strong curb, Till love-touch thaws the cold-hearted. When you rise from sleep on the mat, Look down, see the conquest of love. 15 The meaning of this short story? What child fondly clings to the cliff? Waka-waka, the shell-fish. The scene of this idyl, this love-song, _mele hoipoipo_, is Hamakua, a district on the windward side of Hawaii, subject to rain-squalls. The poet in his allegory represents himself as a stranger sitting in a pandanus grove, _ulu hala_ (verse 2); sheltering himself from a rain-squall by crouching behind a rock, _ua pe’epe’e pohaku_ (verse 4); shifting about on account of the veering of the wind, _luli-luli malie iho_ (verse 6). Interpreting this figuratively, Hamakua, no doubt, is the woman in the case; the grove an emblem of her personality and physical charms; the rain-squall, of her changeful moods and passions. The shifting about of the traveler to meet the veering of the wind would seem to mean the man’s diplomatic efforts to deal with the woman’s varying caprices and outbursts. He now takes up a parable about some creature, a child of the cliff—Hamakua’s ocean boundary is mostly a precipitous wall—which he represents as a hand with five buds. Addressing it as a servant, he bids this creature twine a [Page 124] wreath sufficient for his love, _kui oe a_ _lawa_ (verse 9), _I lei no ku’u aloha_ (verse 10). This creature with five buds, what is it but the human hand, the errand-carrier of man’s desire, _makemake_ (verse 11)? The _pali_, by the way, is a figure often used by Hawaiian poets to mean the glory and dignity of the human body.