The breakers dash, the breakers boom,
Upon the beaches ceaselessly;
Beyond the line of flying spume
Stretch weltering wastes of sea.

There gray gulls hold their loud carouse,
The four great winds rejoice or mourn,
There go deep barques, with plunging prows,
On far adventures borne.

That one, with streaming pennon, seeks
The golden gates that guard the morn,
That one the perilous island peaks
Beyond the stormy Horn.

My fancy sails with each and all,
Unleashed, untrammeled, unconfined;
There is no bond, there is no thrall,
Can chain the roving mind!

Over the wave-rim faint and far
(Spectral sail and ghostly spar)
Through the mist-banks a vessel glides
Biding the ridge of the tossing tides.

Is it Van der Deeken again,
Scourge of the sea, with his evil men,
Come to wreak some murky spell
Out of the yawn of the gulfs of Hell?

Thus it seems that the craft might be,
With its shifting shroud of mystery,
Forth from the unknown weirdly cast,
Into the unknown fading fast.

Now no sign of it near or far,
Spectral sail or ghostly spar!
Yet shall I dream of it shudderingly,
Vanished, eldritch ship of the sea,

Fearful lest some barque be borne
In wake of the wraith (ah, hearts that mourn!)
Through the power of its fatal spell
Into the yawn of the gulfs of Hell.