The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

Then Esther Downing, weeping, cried:
“O arms of mercy, open wide!”
But quickly turned her piteous stare
On Vanderdecken, blanching there,
And watched him with the stony eye,
Of one who sees her dearest die.

Her father, gazing where she signed,
Beheld the fated chief reclined,
As white as man already dead,
His breath a sigh, his vision fled,
But glad in all his patient face,

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Like one who fainting wins the race;
While close beside, companions still
As when they followed him in ill,
His kinsmen paled in mortal chill;
And farther on, in groups of death,
His sailors gasped away their breath;
All waning into swift eclipse,
Yet wearing on their pallid lips
The gentle, thankful smile of those
Who enter joy through gates of woes.

So much the father saw; and then
He fled before those ghastly men.
He caught his child within his arm
And burst away in mad alarm;
He crossed the sways and vanishings
And dusty whirls of fading things;
And, leaping ere the bulwark broke,
Fell gasping-dumb 'mid living folk,
A city trampling, all a-stare,
To see a galleon melt in air.