Читать книгу Oxford Poetry 1917-1921 - Various Authors - Страница 16

E. R. DODDS
(UNIVERSITY)

Table of Contents

MEASURE

Table of Contents

I think we are made the prisoners of the sun,

Snared in the waxing and the waning passion,

Lest life should grow intense

To burn up sense

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

Lest the delight of fire

Consume desire

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,

For fear too strong a fever

Should quite dissever

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,

In check and counterpoise

Contain all joys

Lest the one treasure perish, being possessed.