Poems (Millay)/Alms

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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; To-day I reach around the doorAnd 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.