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.

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
So sweetly to reposing bands 
Of Travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian Sands:
No sweeter voice was ever heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago: 
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of today?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again!

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sung
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listen'd till I had my fill;
And, as I mounted up the hill, 
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.