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.

1870.