On a long midsummer day, the speaker sits rooted to a patch of grass, unable to tear his eyes from an old brick wall covered in lush green creepers. The foliage trembles, as if something alive pulses beneath it like a robe hiding limbs. He suspects a woman is behind the wall, tripping lightly, perhaps singing; the whole wall throbs with her hidden presence, then the life fades into the leaves. Wall upon wall divides them, and he feels like a caged bird—breast full of fiery struggle, lips ready to burst with stormy words. Yet he refuses to be crushed. He tells himself to hope fiercely in the spirit, to soar free though cloistered, and to dismiss the neighbours’ wood, brick, and stone as meaningless. The heart will reach her anyway. The overall mood is one of intense longing, claustrophobia, and quiet, stubborn defiance.
A Wall — Summary
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 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: tho' cloistered fast, soar free; Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring Of the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee!