Explore "Shut Out" by Christina Georgina Rossetti on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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 naught 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.