A Wall

O 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 clothe Yon 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'erbrims 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 excess 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-- Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing That's spirit: tho' cloistered fast, soar free; Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring Of the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee!