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.