And yet—­the pines sing overhead,
   The robins by the alder-pool,
The bees about the garden-bed,
   The children dancing home from school.

And ever at the loom of Birth
   The mighty Mother weaves and sings: 
She weaves—­fresh robes for mangled earth;
   She sings—­fresh hopes for desperate things.

And thou, too:  if through Nature’s calm
   Some strain of music touch thine ears,
Accept and share that soothing balm,
   And sing, though choked with pitying tears.

Eversley, 1870.

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.

THE PRIEST’S HEART

It was Sir John, the fair young Priest,
   He strode up off the strand;
But seven fisher maidens he left behind
   All dancing hand in hand.