Pacchiarotto/Prologue
For works with similar titles, see Prologue.
PROLOGUE.
1.O 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!
2.And lush and lithe, do the creepers clotheYon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth,In lappets of tangle they laugh between.
3.Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?Why tremble the sprays? What life o'er brimsThe body,—the house, no eye can probe,—Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?
4.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.
5.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—
6. Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thingThat's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free; Account as wood, brick, stone, this ringOf the rueful neighbours, and forth to thee!