Classic Poem

I GAVE my love a budding rose
My infant passion to disclose;
And, looking in her radiant eye,
I sought to read my destiny:
She breathed upon it — it became,
Mature in form, no more the same,
As when with timid fears opprest.

I placed the rose bud on her breast.
Again she breathed in sportive play,
And wafted all the leaves away;
" And thus, " she cried, " your vows of love
As passing and as light would prove
As this dispersed and faded flow'r;
One sigh expanded it to bloom,
Another sigh and it was gone,
Nor lived one transient fleeting hour. "