Hawaiian Hilltop (Taggard collection)/Solar Myth
SOLAR MYTH
Maui, the dutiful son and great hero, yields to his mother'sentreaty and adjusts the center of the universe to her con-venience. The days are too short for drying tapa. He is per-suaded to slow down the speed of the spider-sun with a lassoof sisal rope.
The golden spider of the skyLeaped from the crater's rim;And all the winds of morning roseAnd spread, and followed him.
The circle of the day swept out,His vast and splendid path;The purple sea spumed in the westHis humid evening bath.
Thrice twenty mighty legs he had,And over earth there passedShadows daily whipping by,Faster, faster, fast. . . .
For daily did he wax more swift,And daily did he runThe span of heaven to the sea,A lusty, rebel sun.
Then Maui's mother came to himWith weight of household woes:"I cannot get my tapa dryBefore the daylight goes.
"Morning I rise and spread with careMy tapa on the grass;Evening I gather it again,A damp and sodden mass."
Then Maui rose and climbed at nightThe mountain. Dim and deepWithin the crater's bowl he sawThe sprawling sun asleep.
He looped his ropes, the mighty man,He whirled his sisal cordsThey whistled like a hurricane,And cut the air like swords.
Up sprang the spider. Maui hurledHis lasso after him.The spider fled. Great Maui stoodFirm on the mountain-rim.
The spider dipped and swerved and pulled,But struggle as he might,Around one-half his whirl of legsThe sisal ropes cut tight,
He broke them off, the mighty man,He dropped them in the sea.Where there had once been sixty legsThere now were thirty-three.
Maui counted them, and tookThe pathway home; and cameBack to his mother, brooding,—strodeLike a lost man, and lame.
The tarnished spider of the skyLimped slowly over heaven,And with his going mourned and moanedThe missing twenty-seven.
On with a hollow voice he mourned,Poured out his hollow woe;Over, each day the sound of himBellowing, went below.
Maui saw the gulls swarm upAnd scream and settle onThe carcass of the limping thingThat once had been the sun.
But still he thought at length to haveHis mother satisfied."Can't you put back his legs againNow all my tapa 's dried?"
"The days are long and dull," she said."I loved to see them skim."Wearily the old sun shookThe black birds off of him.