Edward Tregear

(1846-1931)

I

Your arrival in Kiwiland
was brought on by despair,

as if you were formed from
a ‘lonely rock’ in a ‘songless land’.

The death of your father
left you near destitute -

and curtailed your scholarly hopes,
and so you sailed with your family

a new life awaiting you
out in the exotic colony.

II

It was here you were
recruited to fight the Maori

who later became your friends,
as you sought to make roads

around Te Awamutu. You then
lived for months with the Maori

never sighting the Pakeha
you left behind. It was here

you built your own mythology:
the young poet cast off

from the Motherland, and your
beloved Arthurian origins, left to

play the wanderer in South
Pacific lands. To complicate

matters, you fell in love
with another man’s wife.

III

Eventually you could marry,
living in New Plymouth and

emerging from obscurity, the man
of letters and a provocative essayist.

Your controversial findings in
the Aryan Maori sought to bind the

people closer together: Pakeha and
Maori were from the same origins

somewhere near the Caspian Sea,
‘…the fairyland of the dark children.’

IV

A dictionary of Maori-Polynesian words
established your place for a time,

along with a book of Polynesian ‘fairy tales’.
And, after founding the Polynesian Society,

you became one of the country’s most
prominent intellectual and social figures.

V

It was with Reeves, the next big step
occurred. You worked with him on

making powerful social reforms.
An avowed ‘socialist’ you worked

next with Seddon, and supported
the rights of the early civil service.

Sometimes though your radical views
embarrassed the conservative Liberals.

Breaking away you were President of
the Social Democrats until Massey

crushed the labour strikes, sending
you into a sudden collapse, and

retirement from all offices in Picton -
a life well-lived, you died, a relative hero.

VI

‘Only imaginative people really live,’
you said, ‘…the others…knowing nothing of

the crushing life, the delightful terrors,
and the delightful pain of full existence.’

This poem is indebted to the research of historian K R Howe