The Mango-Tree

By Charles Kingsley

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.