Kindred

by George Sterling

 

 

Musing, between the sunset and the dark,

As Twilight in unhesitating hands

Bore from the faint horizon’s underlands,

Silvern and chill, the moon’s phantasmal ark,

I heard the sea, and far away could mark

Where that unalterable waste expands

In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands,

And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.

 

There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought:

Star, by an ocean on a world of thine,

May not a being, born like me to die,

Confront a little the eternal Naught

And watch our isolated sun decline—

Sad for his evanescence, even as I?

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Photograph: tritone treatment of an infrared image, Codorus State Park, Pennsylvania