When she had a palace, a long time ago, she yearned for a back yard where the sunflowers grow.
Now she has the back yard and she’s rid of all the weeds; but she left, in the palace, the sunflower seeds.
A woman who once lived in a palace remembers wanting something much simpler: an ordinary back yard with sunflowers growing in it. Now she has that yard, tidy and free of weeds, and the poem turns on a small, sad irony in its last two lines. The seeds that could have become sunflowers stayed behind in the palace. She got the place she dreamed of, but not the thing that would have made it bloom.
The speaker's tone is quiet and a little wry. There is no outright complaint, just a plain statement of what happened, and the neat rhymes make the loss feel almost offhand, which is part of what stings. The title, "Chatelaine," means the mistress of a grand house, so the poem suggests that she gave up a position of status for a simpler life. The mood is wistful: a gentle regret about wishes that come true, but incompletely, and too late.