THE MANGO-TREE

He wiled me through the furzy croft;

He wiled me down the sandy lane.

He told his boy's love, soft and oft,

Until I told him mine again.

We married, and we sailed the main;

A soldier, and a soldier's wife.

We marched through many a burning plain;

We sighed for many a gallant life.

But his — God kept it safe from harm.

He toiled, and dared, and earned command;

And those three stripes upon his arm

Were more to me than gold or land.

Sure he would win some great renown:

Our lives were strong, our hearts were high.

One night the fever struck him down.

I sat, and stared, and saw him die.

I had his children — one, two, three.

One week I had them, blithe and sound.

The next — beneath this mango-tree,

By him in barrack burying-ground.

I sit beneath the mango-shade;

I live my five years’ life all o'er —

Round yonder stems his children played;

He mounted guard at yonder door.

‘ Tis I, not they, am gone and dead.

They live; they know; they feel; they see.

Their spirits light the golden shade

Beneath the giant mango-tree.

All things, save I, are full of life:

The minas, pluming velvet breasts;

The monkeys, in their foolish strife;

The swooping hawks, the swinging nests;

The lizards basking on the soil,

The butterflies who sun their wings;

The bees about their household toil,

They live, they love, the blissful things.

Each tender purple mango-shoot,

That folds and droops so bashful down;

It lives; it sucks some hidden root;

It rears at last a broad green crown.

It blossoms; and the children cry —

‘ Watch when the mango-apples fall.’

It lives: but rootless, fruitless, I —

I breathe and dream;— and that is all.

Thus am I dead: yet cannot die:

But still within my foolish brain

There hangs a pale blue evening sky;

A furzy croft; a sandy lane.