What is the whisper of the leaves
Round ruined turrets reddening fast,
Or nestling under cottage-eaves
While autumn winds go sighing past?
“Life is sorrow,” they whisper,
“Life is only a dream:
The sky seemed blue, but it was not true;
The sky is as grey as the stream!”

What is the whisper of the heart
When love and life have ceased to please,
When passion's fairy dreams depart
And cold winds rustle through the trees?
“Life is trouble,” it whispers,
“Trouble and wild despair

The bloom is fair upon the hawthorn hedges;
The throstles sing from many a budding spray;
Blue ripples laugh along the river-edges;
The blue sky seems to whisper, " It is May! "
And yet the thought of tawny-leaved September
Dismays the fancy with a touch of gloom:
Aye, and a mem'ry of old wild November,
Whose storm-winds trumpet forth pale Autumn's doom.

When love is at its sweetest, in its season,
When it is full of summer joy and mirth,
There sometimes comes the thought, " In love is treason:
Not always Summer sways the green-robed earth. "

How few there are on whom their City fair
And sweet as Athens in the old days shines!
London I loved, — her houses smoke-veiled lines,
Her towers, her sunless stream, her fog-damp air,
The tiger-lily in a London square
To me meant all things. What the soul divines
Of mystery, thrilling through a thousand signs,
This is our own, — this, fearless, we declare.

London I loved, — each Park, and every tree
In each, the red-billed swans, the sparrows gay,
The teeming busy life of every day.
Not the blue wavelets of a summer ocean

Yet deeper is my passionate tenderness.
The nearer that thou art, the more thine eyes
Are ever to me, love, a sweet surprise;
Purer than fancy's is thy warm caress.
If at a distance I had cause to bless,
What shall I say now that God's bluest skies
Of cordial summer, deep with ecstasies,
Beam round me, freed for e'er from each distress?

Oh whiter than the soul of which I dreamed
Is this thine own soul, now its wealth has gleamed
Upon me, brought by God for ever close;
Sweeter the body of wonder I adored,

Take Marlowe's splendid and impassioned heart,
Full of divine Elizabethan fire:
Take Shelley's tenderness, and Shelley's lyre,
And touch dim heights wherethrough strange star-beams dart:
Take Hugo's sovereign love and sense of Art,
And Musset's sweet insatiable desire,
And Byron's wrath at king and priest and liar —
These diverse gifts to one swift soul impart: —
Then over and above these several powers
Add Christ's own changeless spirit of love for men;
Mix Shelley's love for stars and birds and flowers

The light of battle and the light that gleams
From woman's eyes — these are the rays divine
That on the passionate heart of manhood shine
And fill life's highways with tempestuous dreams.
The sweetest light of all is that which streams
Along the glistening bayonets' serried line
When, just now, under growth of rose or pine
Love lightened forth: — how close the memory seems!

Love in the heart, and the strong sword in hand:
The old Elizabethan bards loved so.
The heart of manhood has waxed faint and slow

Now that I pass towards the pure Ideal,
All earthly things are sanctified and white;
Now that I live as in my Lady's sight,
Superb imaginations crown the real.
I am happy now: before me shines the right, —
Sweet to pursue, a gracious flag to follow:
All lesser lamps are glow-worms in a hollow,
By Purity's unutterable light.

I seek my Lady now with tender pleasure,
With hands made bold and spirit undefiled;
Happy I am as in the golden leisure
Of early love, — no more perverse and wild;
I love beyond all words, beyond all measure,

For love's sake keep thine inmost body pure:
Pure not in coarse Convention's meagre sense
But pure through effort terribly intense
High joys to gain, whose sweetness shall endure.
The sea is thine, all flowers are thine, the sure
Strong sun is thine, and morning on the hills:
From these win somewhat of the Force that fills
The world with raptures thy soul may secure.

For love's sake let not any stain abide
Upon the deathless body thou mayest give
Supremely splendid to a deathless Bride,

Ere love's divine ineffable embrace
Be fully won, within some garden-close
Drink all the fragrance of the perfect rose
And let the South West breeze caress thy face.
Give thou to woman the pure inmost grace
Of the delicious-hearted heliotrope:
Love with the rich carnation's power and scope;
Let not God's blossoms worst thee in the race.

See that she giveth thee within her breast
The secret-scented souls of all the flowers
And their strange dim heaven-message in her hair:
Yea, win thou likewise from the summer air

Not thus did Christ the Eternal loving King
Teach truth to man. Not thus did Christ extract
The core of pain, but by strong word and act,
By touch of hand, by glance o'ermastering
The foul disease, the dark invasive thing
Within the suffering body pent and packed.
Love, ever love — by love he could attract,
And draw from deadliest pain its deepest sting.

Learn, ye whose chosen office is to heal,
That all disease is subject to the power
Of Love, — that Love is as a river sweet
Pouring with silvery ripples of appeal