A barge mysterious in the thick of night
Sailed slowly to the somber shore
Beneath the ramparts of the dreaming fort
How silent how austere how still
The lapping of the waves against the barge.
Whence is the barge coming in the night?
Whence did its journey start?
By night or day?
No reply came – and none in that still barge
Appeared to reply or move or breathe:
So horrid thin the stillness in the barge
The barge mysterious in the thick of night.
Anon near the shore it stopped awhile
And there without a pilot stood, without a hope
Of towing to the shore though near stood:
Slow imperceptible moved it with the waves
That danced in the dim lights of the old fort
That drowsed and drowsed ignored
The lapping of the waves against the barge.
And then of sudden lo! It moved as if
Sprung by some unwound spring or else
Like a thing startled at its guilt
At seeing the hiding draperies of the night
Slip slowly down before the toll of dawn
The barge mysterious in the thick of night
Sailed all invisible to another land
Where night still holds its scepter sway
And eerie bats their piercing cries emit.
Ay, ay that slow mysterious barge
Is into the long night so far away
Gone, gone from the eyes gone from the dawn
From good and virtue called it moved and went
To where the evil witches danced the night
In hidden lands by human eyes unseen.
And good and virtue and evil and all – are relative.
Emmanuel George Cefai
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-barge-mysterious-in-the-thick-of-night/
