Classic Poem

Roses and roses year by year
Do I plant and cherish here,
With many a wistful sigh and tear,
Cradling new in the self-same bier
Where the dead be.
Hope and care and love betrayed!
Blighted buds, they all, all fade
In the constant deadly shade
Of this cypress tree.

One black cypress shade will blight
Myriads of roses of delight;
One stern cypress will outlast
Ages of roses withering fast,
Too well I see.
What is left me now to do?
What, but sink at the dark root too;
Let the baleful gloom and rue
Kill also me.