The heaping up of adulations, of which this mele is a capital instance, was not peculiar to Hawaiian poetry. The Roman Senate bestowed divinity on its emperors by vote; the Hawaiian bard laureate, careering on his Pegasus, thought to accomplish the same end by piling Ossa on Pelion with high-flown phrases; and every loyal subject added his contribution to the cairn that grew heavenward. In Hawaii, as elsewhere, the times of royal debasement, of aristocratic degeneracy, of doubtful or disrupted succession, have always been the times of loudest poetic insistence on birth-rank and the occasion for the most frenzied utterance of high-sounding titles. This is a disease that has grown with the decay of monarchy. Applying this criterion to the mele above given, it may be judged to be by no means a product wholly of the archaic period. While certain parts, say from the first to the tenth verses, inclusive, bear the mark of antiquity, the other parts do not ring clear. It seems as if some poet of comparatively modern times had revamped an old mele to suit his own ends. Of this last part two verses were so glaringly an interpolation that they were expunged from the text. The effort to translate into pure Anglo-Saxon this vehement outpour of high-colored phrases has made heavy demands on the vocabulary and has strained the idioms of our speech well-nigh to the point of protest. In lines 1, 2, 4, 8, 14, and 23 the word _Lani_ means a prince or princess, a high chief or king, a heavenly one. In lines 12, 13, 18, and 20 the same word _lani_ means the heavens, a concept in the Hawaiian mind that had some far-away approximation to the Olympus of classic Greece. _Mele_ Ooe no paha ia, e ka lau o ke aloha, Oia no paha ia ke kau mai nei ka hali’a. Ke hali’a-li’a mai nei ka maka, Manao hiki mai no paha au anei. 5 Hiki mai no la ia, na wai e uwe aku? Ua pau kau la, kau ike iaia; Ka manawa oi’ e ai ka manao iloko. Ua luu iho nei au i ke kai nui; Nui ka ukiuki, paio o ka naau. 10 Aohe kanaka eha ole i ke aloha. A wahine e oe, kanaka e au; He mau alualu ka ha’i e lawe. Ike aku i ke kula i’a o Ka-wai-nui. Nui ka opala ai o Moku-lana. 15 Lana ka limu pae hewa o Makau-wahine. O ka wahine no oe, o ke kane no ia. Hiki mai no la ia, na wai e uwe aku? Hoi mai no la ia, a ia wai e uwe aku? [Page 83]