A WALL
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the old wall here! How I could passLife 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 clotheYon 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 10The body,--the house no eye can probe,--Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs? And there again! But my heart may guessWho tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:So the old wall throbbed, and its life's excessDied out and away in the leafy wraps. Wall upon wall are between us: lifeAnd song should away from heart to heart!I--prison-bird, with a ruddy strifeAt breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start-- 20 Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thingThat's spirit: tho' cloistered fast, soar free;Account as wood, brick, stone, this ringOf the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee! * * * * *
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