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The legend of The Flying Dutchman is an old one. It tells of a certain sea-captain who, finding himself prevented by contrary winds from rounding the Cape, swore he would get past through Hell itself should prevail.
The bold resolution apparently gave great offence to Satan, who punished the audacious mariner by condemning him to sail the seas forever, the only mitigation of the sentence being that he might land once in every seven years in the hope of finding a woman who would love him and be faithful to him; the Devil seems to have been cynically confident that the original sentence would begin to run again after each break between the periods of seven years.
At the commencement of the overture we imagine the Flying Dutchman's ship scudding before the storm; it puts to land where the captain has so often been promised rest and redemption...
...We picture a stately ship sweeping past the anchoring-place of the Dutchman; he hears the sailors on the ship singing in glad anticipation of home. The joyous sound fills the Dutchman with rage; he sets sail again and rides madly through the storm, frightening and silencing the happy singers...
...Suddenly a ray of light pierces the gloom of the night like a lightning flash.
The light comes and goes; the mariner drives steadfastly towards it...
At this divine sight the unhappy man breaks down as his ship also is shattered to atoms; but from the waves he rises hallowed and whole, led by the victorious redeemer's rescuing hand to the day-dawn of sublimest love...
It is a woman's look, which full of sublime sorrow and godlike sympathy thrusts towards him. A heart has opened its fathomless depths to the monstrous sorrows of the damned; This heart must sacrifice itself for him, break with sympathy for him , and in destroying his sorrows destroy also itself.
He has flung himself on pirates and offered his ship, filled as it is with treasure, as rare booty; he has driven the ship straight on the cliffs; but nowhere and no how can he find the death he desires, for his curse is s eternal.
Turning his gaze towards heaven he sends up a poignant prayer to "the heaven-appointed angel" to say whether the promise given to him was not simply a ghastly mockery. Then, with a cry of "Vain hope!" he gives full vent to his fury and despair: "Cursed am I for aye! For love and faith unchanging in vain I pray!"
"The term is past", he says "and once again behind me lie seven long years; the weary sea throws me once more on land."
Half wearily, half defiantly, he apostrophizes the "haughty ocean", that is for ever changing, while his pain is eternal. Never, he knows, will he find on land the salvation he seeks there; to the ocean he will be true until its last billow shall have rolled an itself be swallowed up.
