My friend Olin Lagon wrote a rambling column in Civil Beat this week about the tune of “Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī.” He learned that the melody served the British and the Germans, and perhaps the French, before it reached Honolulu. He felt some angst about it.
I can’t share the angst. A tune is like a coin. It passes through many hands and is no worse for the trip.
Words are different. Anthem lyrics are where a nation says what it means, and the words of "Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī" pushed out other words. Olin mentions the older anthem twice and moves on. But it’s worth more than a moment. The king’s sister wrote it, and it is the better song.
On Feb. 20, 1875, King Kalākaua stood in Kawaiahaʻo Church, five days home from a trip to America. His address was read in Hawaiian and in English. He told his people that idleness had thinned the nation since the days of Kamehameha. The cure, he said, was “material and social progress.” He wanted enough of it that the powerful governments then friendly to Hawaiʻi would think the kingdom worth keeping. The king placed the nation’s safety in its own industry and in the favor of stronger nations.
Then the choir rose and sang the national song, written by Princess Liliʻuokalani nine years before. It places the nation’s safety in the care of God.
Almighty Father bend thine ear
And listen to a nation’s prayer
That lowly bows before thy throne
And seeks thy fostering care
Grant your peace throughout the land
Over these sunny sea girt isles
Keep the nation’s life, O Lord
And on our sovereign smile
Liliʻuokalani wrote the song in 1866 because Kamehameha V wanted a national air of Hawaiʻi’s own in place of “God Save the Queen.” Her “Mele Lāhui Hawai‘i” is a prayer to the Almighty Father. The most powerful man in the Islands appears in his own anthem as someone who needs looking after.
The English translation sings well, though it hides some of what the Hawaiian chorus says.
E mau ke ea o ka ʻāina
Ma kou pono mau
We recognize these words from our state motto: Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono, commonly translated as “the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.”
That motto was spoken by Kamehameha III in 1843 after the Paulet affair. But Liliʻuokalani turns it from a declaration into a petition.
A key phrase changes: i ka pono, in righteousness, becomes ma kou pono mau, in thy enduring righteousness. May the life of the land endure through thy everlasting righteousness. The motto never says whose righteousness it means, but Liliʻuokalani’s chorus does.
Liliʻuokalani’s anthem looks to God for every blessing on the nation. The first constitution, in 1840, said the same in prose: “God must be our aid, for it is His province alone to give perfect protection and prosperity.”
By the time she wrote, that sentence was gone from the law. The constitutions of 1852 and 1864 spoke of a God who gives men their rights and may be freely worshipped. That is good law, but it is not a confession. So for 10 years Liliʻuokalani’s anthem carried the faith that the constitution had dropped. At the opening of a legislature or on the birthday of a king, the kingdom stood and told God that its hope was all in him. It was the last place where the nation still said so with one voice.
Kalākaua wrote his own words in 1874. They were first sung at Kawaiahaʻo on his birthday, the day before he sailed for America. The tune was one the royal bandmaster had arranged two years earlier as a hymn to Kamehameha. For more than a year the kingdom had two songs. In 1876 the king kept his own.
Hawaiʻi’s own true sons
Be loyal to your chief
Your country’s liege and lord,
The chief
Royal father,
Kamehameha,
Shall defend in war,
With spears
The reasons for Kalākaua invoking Kamehameha are not hard to find. The legislature had elected him over a beloved queen, and a riot followed. He was not of Kamehameha’s line, and everyone knew it.
A shaky throne wants a song that ties it to something solid, and Kalākaua reached for the great king. But Kamehameha died before the first missionaries landed. He kept the kapu to the end, with Puʻukoholā heiau dedicated with human sacrifice. Kamehameha was a great king, but he is an odd father for a Christian nation to sing to.
Kalākaua’s mele is a different creed from his sister’s. Her song speaks to God about the king. His speaks to the people about the king, and God is not addressed at all. Hers gives the name Father to the Almighty, and his gives it to Kamehameha. She asks for peace from God. The only defense his song names is the spear. The psalmist cautioned against relying on arms for defense: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”
With the old song went the last public words that rested the nation on God. They went at the king’s whim, in favor of his own verses.
But spears could not defend that king. Eleven years later he signed a constitution at the point of other men’s bayonets. Six years after that the throne fell, and no spear was strong enough to defend it. His sister, a prisoner in her own palace, wrote another hymn, the “Queen’s Prayer.” She asked again for peace from God.
Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī is still sung at ball games and graduations, and with special feeling at sovereignty rallies. Most of us learned it before we could ask what its lyrics said, or what they replaced.
But “He Mele Lāhui Hawaiʻi” is the better song, and Liliʻuokalani’s anthem is still worth hearing.
Author Sterling Higa can be reached at hello@sterlinghiga.com.
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