And now that my feet are turned homeward again
My heart is still crying Ahoy! Ahoy!
And my thoughts are still out on the Spanish main
A-chasing the frigates of France and Spain,
For at heart an old sailor is always a boy; And his nose will still itch
For the powder and pitch
Till the days when he can't tell t'other from which,
Nor a grin o' the guns from a glint o' the sea,
Nor a skipper like Nelson from lubbers like me.
Chorus.—Nor a skipper like Nelson from lubbers like me.
Ay! Now that I'm old I'm as bold as the best,
And the life of a sailor is all my joy;
Though I've swapped my leg
For a wooden peg
And my head is as bald as a new-laid egg,
The smell of the sea
Is like victuals to me,
And I think in the grave I'll be crying Ahoy!
For, though my old carcass is ready to rest,
At heart an old sailor is always a boy.
Chorus.—At heart an old sailor is always a boy.
THE FISHER-GIRL
Where the old grey churchyard slopes to the sea,
On the sunny side of a mossed headstone;
Watching the wild white butterflies pass
Through the fairy forests of grass,
Two little children with brown legs bare
Were merrily, merrily
Weaving a wonderful daisy-chain,
And chanting the rhyme that was graven there
Over and over and over again;
While the warm wind came and played with their hair
And laughed and was gone
Out, far out to the foam-flowered lea
Like an ocean-wandering memory.
Eighteen hundred and forty-three,
Dan Trevennick was lost at sea;
And, buried here at her husband's side
Lies the body of Joan, his bride,
Who, a little while after she lost him, died.
This was the rhyme that was graven there,
And the children chanted it quietly;
As the warm wind came and played with their hair,
And rustled the golden grasses against the stone,
And laughed and was gone
To waken the wild white flowers of the sea,
And sing a song of the days that were,
A song of memory, gay and blind
As the sun on the graves that it left behind;
For this, ah this, was the song of the wind.
I