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.

He came unto the wise wife's house:
'Now, Mother, to prove your art;
To charm May Carleton's