HER sails are furled and her anchor’s down.
The lamps are lighted in Melbourne town;
I’ll spend my money on Sally Brown,
Wey, hey!
With a shipmate true and a pound or two,
I’ll spend my money on Sally Brown,
Wey, hey, ho!
We’ve brought her over from Puget Sound
With her load o’ Canadian pine;
And her blue-nose mate, that’s dead and drowned,
He was never a friend of mine.
Been crimped in ‘Frisco and jugged at ‘Tool;
I been stoushed in a Plymouth slum;
I’ve ‘blued’ my money and played the fool
With the Women, and Dice, and Rum.
I’ve smelt the bilge of a Swedish brig
Where the right whale breaches and blows;
I’ve sailed in a bark of Yankee rig
To the land where the cotton grows.
I’ve lived in the Land o’ the God-Forbid
Where hell is your daily lot;
I sarved my time as a fo’castle kid
In the House of the God-forgot.
I’ve shipped with tigers and human swine;
I’ve shipped with a yaller crew;
An’ Satan himself was mild and fine
To some of the mates I knew.
He led ’em all by a level mile;
He could make it an easy win
On any track of the All-That’s-Vile
On the sawdust courses o’ sin.
“The seas are mine,” said the Lord above
When the work o’ the world began;
He gave them Hate and He gave them Love,
Hard graft, and the Sailorman.
He made them wide, and He made them deep,
With a seaport here and there,
And plenty o’ rain and salt to keep
The depths and the shallows clear.
And North and South they are green and grey,
But the Middle Seas they are blue,
We slid him out at the fall of day
When the skipper had read it through.
A blue-nosed mate with a ginger ‘ead
And a squint in his ugly eye,
The Bluebird’s crew, to a man, they said
It was good that the mate should die.
Aye! Dago Pete with his broken face;
And ‘Sails,’ what he kicked and cowed;
I guess old ‘Sails’ took heart o’ grace
When he stitched him into his shroud.
And Boozer Bill, from the State o’ Maine;
Old Pat and Antonio;
That partin’ brought ’em no grief or pain;
They all had their marks to show.
He hazed us out o’ the bloomin’ Bay
Till we lifted the Southern light:
He hazed the watch through the livelong day
And he made a hell of the Night.
It was ‘dargs’ and ‘skulkers’ and ‘hogs’ and ‘skunks’;
And sorrow and sweating and curse;
Till we dreamt at night in our crowded bunks
Of his sudden death and worse.
His soul was posted as overdue
At the homing Port o’ Hell;
A block in a way that blocks will do
From ‘er crosstrees somehow . . . fell!
He sprawled the deck like a stricken bull
To the lilt of a ten-knot breeze;
With the canvas drawing free and full
As she parted the combing seas.
Her planks were splashed and spattered and red,
Till we scraped ’em with holystone;
It ketched him fair on his ginger ‘ead
And he went with ‘ardly a moan!
He lived a dog, an’ a dog he died;
I watched him a-sinking down,
As we put him over the Bluebird’s side
On the road to Melbourne town.
Now Dago Pete he will find a girl,
Antonio ‘blue in’ his gain;
And Pat get drunk as an Irish earl,
With Bill from the State o’ Maine.
We’ve brought her over from Puget Sound
With her load o’ Canadian pine;
That blue-nose mate that is dead an’ drowned
He was never a friend o’ mine.
The Bluebird’s anchor is out and down;
The girls are waiting in Melbourne town;
I’ll spend my money on Sally Brown,
Wey, hey!
With a messmate true and a pound to ‘blue,’
I’ll spend my money on Sally Brown,
Wey, hey, ho!
(Edwin James Brady)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Man Poems, World Poems, Night Poems, Light Poems, Soul Poems, Faces Poems, Friendship Poems, Pain Poems, Woman Poems, Work & Career PoemsBased on Keywords: wey, yaller, ardly, swedish, squint, antonio, sailorman, shipmate, seaport, ketched, breaches