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.