Alms

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.
Alms

by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1921
