Christina Rossetti

Dec 5, 1830 - Dec 29, 1894

 

Shut Out

by Christina Rossetti

The door was shut. I looked between
Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:

From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,
From flower to flower the moths and bees;
With all its nests and stately trees
It had been mine, and it was lost.

A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
Blank and unchanging like the grave.
I peering through said: Let me have
Some buds to cheer my outcast state.

He answered not. Or give me, then,
But one small twig from shrub or tree;
And bid my home remember me
Until I come to it again.

The spirit was silent; but he took
Mortar and stone to build a wall;
He left no loophole great or small
Through which my straining eyes might look:

So now I sit here quite alone
Blinded with tears; nor grieve for that,
For nought is left worth looking at
Since my delightful land is gone.

A violet bed is budding near,
Wherein a lark has made her nest:
And good they are, but not the best;
And dear they are, but not so dear.

Source:

Goblin Market and Other Poems
Copyright 1865
Macmillan And Co.London and Cambridge