with arms outstretched and eager face ablaze

True Love is but a humble, low-born thing, 

And hath its food served up in earthen ware; 

It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, 

Through the everydayness of this work-day world, 

Baring its tender feet to every flint, 

Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray 

From Beauty’s law of plainness and content; 

A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile 

Can warm earth’s poorest hovel to a home; 

Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must, 

And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless, 

Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth 

In bleak November, and, with thankful heart, 

Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit, 

As full of sunshine to our aged eyes 

As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring. 

Such is true Love, which steals into the heart 

With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn 

That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark, 

And hath its will through blissful gentleness,

Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare, 

Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night 

Painfully quivering on the dazëd eyes; 

A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults, 

Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle-points, 

But, loving-kindly ever looks them down 

With the o’ercoming faith that still forgives; 

A love that shall be new and fresh each hour, 

As is the sunset's golden mystery, 

Or the sweet coming of the evening-star, 

Alike, and yet most unlike, every day, 

And seeming ever best and fairest now; 

A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks, 

But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer, 

Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts 

By a clear sense of inward nobleness; 

A love that in its object findeth not 

All grace and beauty, and enough to sate 

Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good 

Found there, sees but Heaven-implanted types 

Of good and beauty in the soul of man, 

And traces, in the simplest heart that beats, 

A family-likeness to its chosen one, 

That claims of it the rights of brotherhood. 

For Love is blind but with the fleshly eye, 

That so its inner sight may be more clear; 

And outward shows of beauty only so 

Are needful at the first, as is a hand 

To guide and to uphold an infant’s steps: 

Fine natures need them not: their earnest look 

Pierces the body’s mask of thin disguise, 

And beauty ever is to them revealed, 

Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay, 

With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze, 

Yearning to be but understood and loved. 

 

[James Russell Lowell {1819-1891} 'Love', from The Complete Poetical Works of Lowell]