(A Story of the Suez Canal)
Alone, yes, alone, a deserted coast,
Though once I was lord of all;
A king, and a fear, in the Southern Sea,
To men who obeyed my call.
Yet long was my reign, and my triumphs great,
In days that are dead and gone;
And now I am waiting, my voices dumb,
A giant of my glory shorn.
I know they are passing me in the North
By way of the great canal,
And mocking the passage around the Cape,
Where I and my victims dwell;
Forsaken, undone, but I wait my chance,
With wanderers, sorely pressed,
The ones who at last will my boundaries pass,
To fall on my waiting breast.
Alone, but for one who will ever sail,
For aye in my mighty grasp;
The Dutchman, who, trying to round my coast,
Was felled by my raging blast;
For the story's true of the spectral crew
Who wander amid the gloom,
While my surges sing a deathless hymn,
The song of the Dutchman's doom.
He'd a mighty ship, and he dared my wrath
With haughty contempt and pride,
And a scornful sneer, which I turned to fear
As vainly escape he tried;
Well I knew his woe, as he tried to go,
In spite of my raging storm,
With a bragging curse, which could not disperse
The fear that was in him born.
How I drew him on, and the moonlight shone
On faces so drawn and white,
And I mocked the care that was written there
Aloud in my wild delight;
There was naught to save from my grave,
I watched them, as one by one
To my rest were borne, in the early morn,
Believing their work was done.
Then a fancy came, for my future fame,
To tell of their deathless doom,
So I sent the ship in its ceaseless trip,
A phantom amid the gloom;
And the story's spread of the restless dead—
They call it the ship of hell—
But I held it fast, when the others passed
Away to the great canal.
For the Dutchman said that, alive or dead,
He'd conquer amidst the storm,
And I've heard them tell, in the depths of hell,
Of spectres that then were born;
They with me agreed he should ne'er be freed
Till proving his reckless vow;
And he's sailing yet, with his royals set.
In anguish I see him now.
If he knew the way of the ships to-day,
From Suez they mock me still,
If he knew the passage that men have made
His boast he could e'en fulfill.
If he knew his vow could be proven now
How gladly he'd say farewell,
But he'll never know that he's free to go
By way of the Great Canal.