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.