A Wall
O the old wall here! How I could passLife in a long midsummer day,My feet confined to a plot of grass,My eyes from a wall not once away!
And lush and lithe do the creepers clotheYon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,In lappets of tangle they laugh between.
Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrimsThe body,--the house no eye can probe,--Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?
And there again! But my heart may guessWho tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:So the old wall throbbed, and its life's excessDied out and away in the leafy wraps.
Wall upon wall are between us: lifeAnd song should away from heart to heart!I--prison-bird, with a ruddy strifeAt breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start--
Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thingThat's spirit: tho' cloistered fast, soar free;Account as wood, brick, stone, this ringOf the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee!
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