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.