Alms

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

     My heart is what it was before,
       A house where people come and go;
     But it is winter with your love,
       The sashes are beset with snow.

     I light the lamp and lay the cloth,
       I blow the coals to blaze again;
     But it is winter with your love,
       The frost is thick upon the pane.

     I know a winter when it comes:
       The leaves are listless on the boughs;
     I watched your love a little while,
       And brought my plants into the house.

     I water them and turn them south,
       I snap the dead brown from the stem;
     But it is winter with your love,—
       I only tend and water them.

     There was a time I stood and watched
       The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray;
     I loved the beggar that I fed,
       I cared for what he had to say,

     I stood and watched him out of sight;
       Today I reach around the door
     And set a bowl upon the step;
       My heart is what it was before,

     But it is winter with your love;
       I scatter crumbs upon the sill,
     And close the window,—and the birds
       May take or leave them, as they will.