For, he said, how a sparrow can’t founder, d’ye see,
Without orders that come down below;
And a many fine things that prov’d clearly to me
That Providence takes us in tow.
For, says he, d’ye mind me, let storms e’er so oft
Take the topsails o’ sailors a-back,
There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.
In the next verse Jack is worldly again. When Poll is ‘sniv’ling and piping her eye’ at the idea of parting from him, he says tenderly—and we can hear the voice of T. P. Cooke saying it—‘Why, what a damn’d fool you must be!’ Then comes the change in his religious philosophy:—
Can’t you see the world’s wide, and there’s room for us all,