charm of beauty. Most of all,
For your light foot I wearied, and your knock
That was the glad reveille of my day.
Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
At morning through the portico you pass,
One moment glance, where by the pillared wall
Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument
Of faiths forgot and races undivined:
Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,
The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice,
Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.
As far as these from their ancestral shrine,
So far, so foreign, your divided friends
Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.

_Apemama_.

XXXVII--THE HOUSE OF TEMBINOKA

[At my departure from the island of Apemama, for which you will look in
vain in most atlases, the King and I agreed, since we both set up to be
in the poetical way, that we should celebrate our separation in verse.
Whether or not his Majesty has been true to his bargain, the laggard
posts of the Pacific may perhaps inform me in six months, perhaps not
before a year. The following lines represent my part of the contract,
and it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain
a civilised audience. Nothing throughout has been invented or
exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author's muse has
confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts or legends that I saw or
heard during two months' residence upon the island.--R. L. S.]

_ENVOI_

_Let us_, _who part like brothers_, _part like bards_;
_And you in your tongue and measure_, _I in mine_,
_Our now division duly solemnise_.
_Unlike the strains_, _and yet the theme is one_:
_The strains unlike_, _and how unlike their fate_!
_You to the blinding palace-yard shall call_
_The prefect of the singers_, _and to him_,
_Listening devout_, _your valedictory verse_
_Deliver_; _he_, _his attribute fulfilled_,
_To the island chorus hand your measures on_,
_Wed now with harmony_: _so them_, _at last_,
_Night after night_, _in the open hall of dance_,
_Shall thirty matted men_, _to the clapped hand_,
_Intone and bray and bark_. _Unfortunate_!
_Paper and print alone shall honour mine_.

THE SONG

Let now the King his ear arouse
And toss the bosky ringlets from his brows,
The while, our bond to implement,
My muse rela