<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h2>A WALL</h2>
<p class="indent2">
O the old wall here! How I could pass<br/>
Life in a long midsummer day,<br/>
My feet confined to a plot of grass,<br/>
My eyes from a wall not once away!<br/><br/>
And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe<br/>
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:<br/>
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,<br/>
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.<br/><br/>
Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?<br/>
<span class="right">10</span> Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims <br/>
The body,—the house no eye can probe,—<br/>
Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?<br/><br/>
And there again! But my heart may guess<br/>
Who tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:<br/>
So the old wall throbbed, and it's life's excess<br/>
Died out and away in the leafy wraps.<br/><br/>
Wall upon wall are between us: life<br/>
And song should away from heart to heart!<br/>
I—prison-bird, with a ruddy strife<br/>
<span class="right">20</span> At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start— <br/><br/>
Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing<br/> <span class="left"><SPAN name="page51" id="page51">[page 51]</SPAN></span>
That's spirit: tho' cloistered fast, soar free;<br/>
Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring <br/>
Of the rueful neighbours, and—forth to thee!</p>
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