Come Young Pirates, Part X V I - The Augean In Shadows Lay Poem by Captain Cur

The Augean in shadows lay
Blending mists of night and day,
Our lantern blinked, it would not hail
Riveted to the ocean pail,
Unusual, of pagan craft,
To her size we were less than half,
Seeming to glower in the hoar
Unwelcoming as a hermit's door;
Blackening clouds threatening rain
That feed the ocean with their grain
Layered thickest above that ship
As dryness shriveled each man's lip.
The hull as high as mountain woods
Its beams uncounted multitudes
Lying there in uneasy still,
A fortress on a haunted hill.

Sounding's rode the vaporous air
As hurried footfalls disappeared
In labyrinths of wooden decks
That once belonged to ancient wrecks,
Still holding riches and their crews
In murky waters deep from view
But here on the crystalline glass
Reflecting memory from the past,
Drifting beneath unleveled skies
Those crews and treasures fed our eyes;
Was Augean a ship of rest
Or prophetic orphan of death?

Remotest shadows crossed the line
Not satisfied to trail behind
Disturbing the wave less ocean
Rankling with a sudden motion
The bow turned starboard on a whim
As graceful as a sea whales fin;
Forms that seemed of molten fire
Climbed the masts on knotted wire,
On these waters of sacrifice
A paradox of death and life
Hidden under fallacious skies
Those black sails did rise!

Why were we gifted with this sight
Haunting's venomous, yet bright?
In our eyes history unfolds
Two thousand years of rise and falls,
Civilization's lived and passed
As simple blades of wilting grass;
Rivers Tigress and Euphrates,
Persia, Mesopotamia,
The Indus and Egyptian's Nile
Cleopatra's lustful smile,
Fertile Yangtze and Yellow River
Chinese powder, guns and silver,
Inca gold and religious feasts,
Cuniform gods, symbols and priests,
Alexander's conquering ways
Prestigious in a warring age,
The Assyrians, Scythians
And prideful Babylonians,
The Pantheon, Persepolis,
Plato, Socrates, Odysseus,
As waves of water take their course
Invaders build their Trojan Horse
Cities crumbling before our eyes
Washed away by the acrid skies.

Phoenicians sound their blaring horns
As Greek mythologies were born;
The Dynasties of Tang and Ming
In waves of innovation bring
Silk, spices and porcelain art
Trade that paved the westward routes,
Roman legions advancing and bright
Destroyed by hedonistic rites
Pervasive panoramic views
Man's beginning and sudden ruin.

Then Augean like shadows end
Must sail to where the seven blend
There is no wave beyond its reach
In lessoned time, itself to teach.

(The Augean is the name the crew gave
the ghost ship they saw in the shadows.)