Second April: ALMS by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.