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,
And 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 the 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.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Time Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Birds Poems, Snow Poems, Winter PoemsBased on Keywords: sashes, ill-natured, window-