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!