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