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.
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