Read "The Flying Dutchman" by Edwin Arlington Robinson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
UNYIELDING in the pride of his defiance, / Afloat with none to serve or to command, / Lord of himself at last, and all by Science, / He seeks the Vanished Land.
Alone, by the one light of his one thought,
He steers to find the shore from which we came, / Fearless of in what coil he may be caught
On seas that have no name.
Into the night he sails; and after night
There is a dawning, though there be no sun;
Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight, / Unsighted, he sails on.
At last there is a lifting of the cloud
Between the flood before him and the sky; / And then - though he may curse the Power aloud
That has no power to die -
He steers himself away from what is haunted
By the old ghost of what has been before, -
Abandoning, as always, and undaunted, / One fog-walled island more.