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.
