‘Come into the garden, Maud’ is a line from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Maud. The speaker is deeply in love with Maud, and is passionately inviting her to join him in the garden, signifying a desire for intimacy and a moment of shared connection in a secluded space; it’s often interpreted as a symbolic call to enter into a deeper relationship with him. He said he’d be sure to hear her coming, and no matter how ‘airy a tread’, his heart would hear her and beat. If he were dead, ie ‘were it earth in an earthy bed’ his ‘dust would hear her and beat’ even if he’d ‘lain for a century dead’.

Soprano

Alto

Tenor

Bass