Bondage — Summary

The speaker describes a life hemmed in by cages—bar on bar—that feel grim and forbidding. These aren’t necessarily literal cages; they read as social or emotional restrictions, pressures that grip the heart like ghosts. She feels so trapped that her eyes go unseeing; she cannot even look outward for a place to roam freely. The question “Whereunto may I wander free?” has no answer in the outside world. Instead, the only freedom left is inward. The final line turns the sorrow into something quieter and more private: her garden walks lie within her own mind. The mood is heavy, claustrophobic, and mournful, yet the ending offers a fragile sense of inner refuge—freedom imagined rather than lived.