Waiata 5: He mea whakamāori, nā ngā Waiata a Wiremu Hākipia

A translation into Māori of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5


Ko te Taima, nāna i āta hanga

Te kanohi pīwari, e arohia ana e ngā kanohi katoa,

Ka tūkino kē ia i taua kanohi rā

Kia ātaahuakore haere te tino ātahua o mua rā.

Ko Taima ihuoneone te ārahi

Raumati ki te hōtoke mākinakina, whakangaro ai;

Rākau mauri hukakapapatia,

Ngaro noa ngā rau hauora, mōwai tonu te whenua.

Mei kore ko tō Raumati iheuria

(He mauhere e noho whāiti ana i ngā tara karāhe)

Ngaro noa a Ātaahua me tōna hua,

Kia korekau ia me ōna kōrero e mōhiotia.

Engari, ahakoa te putiputi iheua e tūtaki ki a Takurua,

Ko te hanga noa ka hemo, ka ora reka tonu te mauri.


Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,

Will play the tyrants to the very same

And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter, and confounds him there;

Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness everywhere:

Then were not summer’s distillation left,

A prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:

But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Image: ‘Tarata, - Pittosporum eugenioides,’ Plate 9. From the book: The art album of New Zealand flora, 1889, Gisborne, by Sarah Featon, Bock & Cousins. Te Papa. Catalogue entry here.

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Shakespeare: Waiata 3 | Sonnet 3

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Shakespeare: Waiata 6 | Sonnet 6