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 it's 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!