I think we are made the prisoners of the sun,

Snared in the waxing and the waning passion,

And lose life's fashion in the unfashioned One.

I believe the cool unlabouring dark is sent

Swift on the wildness of the day's mad ending

And in Love's spending Love itself be spent.

I believe the rain-soft autumn has its task

To curb the stretched importunate flame of summer,

The invisible murmur from the coloured mask.

This is the sun's wisdom: that change and rest

And change, the embodied world's recurrent measure,

Lest the one treasure perish, being possessed.