Spring returns to the lane with birds, cherry blossom, and green hedges, and everything seems to call out “Now, now, now.” But the speaker cannot share in that renewal. Someone he loved is gone, and her absence makes the familiar place feel strange and lonely. The bright returning life only sharpens his grief: she will never walk there again. The mood is sorrowful and quiet, even as the scene is full of spring. That contrast is strongest in the final image—every blossoming bough also holds a dead bough. Beauty and loss are tangled together, and the speaker cannot see the season’s promise without seeing what is missing.
In the Lane — Summary
The birds return, The blossom brightens again the cherry bough. The hedges are green again In the airless lane, And hedge and blossom and bird call, Now, now, now!
O birds, return! Who will care if the blossom die on the bough, Or the hedge be bare again In the screaming lane? For what they were these are not, are not now.
The one gone makes All that remain seem strange and lonely now. She will not walk here again In the blossoming lane:-- And there's a dead bough in every blossoming bough.