Classic Poem

Said the child to the rose: “I would that I
Might rest in a pretty garden close,
To feel the wind as it brushes by,
To play with every flower that grows;
It must be sweet in the summer-tide
To watch the buds as they open wide,”
Said the child to the rose.
Said the rose to the child: “And I would be,
Like you, a creature sweet and mild,
Safe-housed from weathers winterly
And warmed with love all undefiled;
'Tis cold for sleep when the night is near,
And the time till morning goes full drear,”
Said the rose to the child.

They had their will: for the rose one day
Was plucked and worn in a ballroom gay,
Where the air was stifling hot,—and so
It shrunk and died in the fierce, brief glow.

The child, a woman pinched and white,
In after years, on a winter's night,
Lay in the garden, took her rest,
Dead, with a baby at her breast.