POET: @3O Vine along my garden wall Could I thine English slumber break And thee from wintry exile disenthrall Where would thy spirit wake?@1 @3Vine@1: I WOULD wake at the hour of dawning in May in Italy When rose mists rise from the Magra's valley plains In the fields of maize and olives around Pontremoli When peaks grow golden and clear and the starlight wanes: I would wake to the dance of the sacred mountains boundlessly Kindling their marble snows in the rite of fire, To them my newborn tendrils softly and soundlessly Would uncurl and aspire. I would hang no more on thy wall a rusted slumberer Listless and fruitless strewing the pathways cold, I would seem no more in thine eyes an idle cumberer Profitless alien, bitter and sere and old. In some warm terraced dell where the Roman rioted And still in tiers his stony theatre heaves Would I festoon with leaf-light his glory quieted And flake his thrones with leaves. Doves from the mountain belfries would seek and cling to me To drink from the altar, winnowing the fragrant airs; Women from olived hillsides by turns would sing to me Beating the olives or stooping afield in pairs; On gala evenings the gay little carts of laborers Swinging from axles their horns against evil eye And crowded with children, revelers, pipers, and taborers Chanting, would pass me by. . . . | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COUNSEIL TO A BACHELER by MARIANNE MOORE BY THE POTOMAC by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH LIMBO by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE THE BLACK RIDERS: 22 by STEPHEN CRANE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE: 3. IN PORT by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON IDYLLS OF THE KING: GARETH AND LYNETTE by ALFRED TENNYSON FORMALITY AND THE SOUL: 2. JAMES MACNEIL WHISTLER by KARL W. BIGELOW |