The Cypress and the Roses

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.