Lyric Poem · Love

A Wall

by Robert Browning

Reading room

1O the old wall here! How I could pass

2 Life in a long midsummer day,

3My feet confined to a plot of grass,

4 My eyes from a wall not once away!

5And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe

6 Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:

7Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,

8 In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

9Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?

10 Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims

11The body, — the house no eye can probe, —

12 Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?

13And there again! But my heart may guess

14 Who tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:

15So the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess

16 Died out and away in the leafy wraps.

17Wall upon wall are between us: life

18 And song should away from heart to heart!

19I — prison-bird, with a ruddy strife

20 At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start —

21Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing

22 That's spirit: tho' cloistered fast, soar free;

23Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring

24 Of the rueful neighbours, and — forth to thee!

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“A Wall” by Robert Browning — quilloak.com/poems/a-wall

Quick facts

Poem: A Wall
Poet: Robert Browning
Length: 24 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Love, Nature, Death & Loss

Craft notes

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Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 24 lines · 6 quatrains
Line length: Mostly 9-syllable lines.

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Text, source & rights

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Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: Robert Browning1812–1889
Source record: PoetryDBA Wall by robert-browning, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 75ed41becfa49efe…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Love Nature Death & Loss

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