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.