Searching for Love

How little I have noticed the true notes of Love.
It is not merely romance's motion of a pretty passageway through the rain,
Wreathed in roses or made white with sun.
It is the rushing blue light moving through a winter grain,
The tearful look, after death has run
And left her sad and dismal lips against a withered cheek.
It is the hand upon a crying child
When all desertion seems to fill the starving ribs,
The coinage added to the measly pile
Where some old man in rag-clothes lives.
It is the coat offered to a shivering stranger,
And the lips kissed in a darkening night,
As if every cold disaster's danger
Has turned into a crucifix of delight.
Sweet Savior forbid me if I kneel at eve to pray
With a woe in my heart that the world has bent to hell;
If ever I was to search for heaven's way,
I would find it in the love of humans still.