[Translation.] _Song_ Methinks it is you, leaf plucked from Love’s tree, You mayhap, that stirs my affection. There’s a tremulous glance of the eye, The thought she might chance yet to come: 5 But who then would greet her with song? Your day has flown, your vision of her— A time this for gnawing the heart. I’ve plunged just now in deep waters: Oh the strife and vexation of soul! 10 No mortal goes scathless of love. A wife thou estranged, I a husband estranged, Mere husks to be cast to the swine.[203] Look, the swarming of fish at the weir! Their feeding grounds on the reef 15 Are waving with mosses abundant. Thou art the woman, that one your man— At her coming who’ll greet her with song? Her returning, who shall console? [Footnote 203: In the original, _He mau alualu ka ha’i e lawe_, literally “Some skins for another to take.”] This song almost explains itself. It is the soliloquy of a lover estranged from his mistress. Imagination is alive in eye and ear to everything that may bring tidings of her, even of her unhoped-for return. Sometimes he speaks as if addressing the woman who has gone from him, or he addresses himself, or he personifies some one who speaks to him, as in the sixth line: “Your day has flown, ...” The memory of past vexation and anguish extorts the philosophic remark, “No mortal goes scathless of love.” He gives over the past, seeks consolation in a new attachment—he dives, _lu’u_, into the great ocean, “deep waters,” of love, at least in search of love. The old self (selves), the old love, he declares to be only _alualu_, empty husks. He—it is evidently a man—sets forth the wealth of comfort, opulence, that surrounds him in his new-found peace. The scene, being laid in the land Kailua, Oahu—the place to which the enchanted tree _Maka-léi_[204] was carried long ago, from which time its waters abounded in fish—fish are naturally the symbol of the opulence that now bless his life. But, in spite of the new-found peace and prosperity that attend him, there is a lonely corner in his heart; the old question echoes in its vacuum, “Who’ll greet her with song? who shall console?” [Footnote 204: _Maka-léi_. (See note _b_, p. 17.)] [Page 84] _Mele_