My heart is what it was before <br />A house where people come and go, <br />But it is winter with your love: <br />The sashes are beset with snow. <br /> <br />I light the lamp and lay the cloth, <br />I blow the coals to blaze again, <br />But it is winter with your love: <br />The frost is thick upon the pane. <br /> <br />I know a winter when it comes: <br />The leaves are listless on the boughs. <br />I watched your love a little while, <br />And brought my plants into the house. <br /> <br />I water them and turn them south, <br />And snap the dead brown from the stem, <br />But it is winter with your love: <br />I only tend and water them. <br /> <br />There was a time I stood and watched <br />The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray; <br />I loved the beggar that I fed, <br />I cared for what he had to say, <br /> <br />I stood and watched him out of sight; <br />Today I reach around the door <br />And set the bowl upon the step. <br />My heart is what it was before, <br /> <br />But it is winter with your love: <br />I scatter crumbs upon the sill, <br />And close the window--and the birds <br />May take or leave them, as they will.<br /><br />Edna St Vincent Millay<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/alms-2/
