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Charles Kingsley - The Mango-TreeCharles Kingsley - The Mango-Tree
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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.
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