Downing legends : stories in rhyme / J. W. DeForest [electronic text]

XL

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,

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.