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.

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?

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!

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: though cloistered fast, soar free;
Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring
    Of the rueful neighbors, and—forth to thee!