  Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass Life 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 clothe5 Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green: Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth, In lappets of tangle they laugh between. Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe? Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims10 The body—the house, no eye can probe— Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs? And there again! But my heart may guess Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps; So, the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess15 Died out and away in the leafy wraps! Wall upon wall are between us; life And song should away from heart to heart! I—prison-bird, with a ruddy strife At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start—20 Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing That's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free; Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring Of the rueful neighbors, and—forth to thee! |
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