‘Vespers’ by Kemar Cummings

Vespers

Lonely broods the moonlit gloom
High above the river’s flume,
Hiding in its dark vault
Stars nebulous clouds exalt.
The winds are free, the roaring sea
Loosed the breeze upon the lea,
And bound the sand’s serene horizons.
Days, in summer-brightened seasons,
Rustle like a bee’s buzzing bustle
Round a rose. The cats shuffle
Through the dewy grass where lie
Human worlds where dawns descry
Crystal hearts which move through time.
The days, the nights, in heights sublime,
Mark our mortal chapters.
When sunsets glow and evening captures
Sparks of shooting stars, and oceans
Flood the stellar world’s foundations,
Gleaming eyes may glimpse the core
Where all life thus keeps its store.

Sea-Thoughts

The oceans open blue horizons wide
To endless skies where burning dawns divide
The night from blazing day, and the sun’s sweep
Awakes the spirit from the deeps of sleep.
Through dark caverns where thoughts had dwelt,
The mind, pacing up and down its hopes, felt
The seas’ relentless weight rolling fate
In boundless depths fraught with human freight.
Luminous eyes plumb the surging world,
With fingers searching jetting eddies that swirled
For lucent liquid moons in the shimmering surf.
A whistling breeze, which smoothes the grassy turf,
Fills hollow hearts with a flood of peace.
The waves’ azure expanse, the wind’s caprice
Amid the brine which crests the sky with spray,
Even the low tide that laps the sands may
Create the mind the stars and fire immerse
In streams of gold to shape the universe.

Kemar Cummings is a poet living in Australia.

“Promenade de Julie et Saint-Preux sur le lac de Genève” (“Moonlight boating on Lake Geneva”) by Charles Edouard Le Prince.