Robert Browning — 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!


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all Robert Browning songs all songs from 1899