I

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!

II

And lush and lithe, do the creepers clothe
  Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth,
  In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

III

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
  Why tremble the sprays? What life o'er brims
The body,—the house, no eye can probe,—
  Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?

IV

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.

V

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—

VI

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!