I leaned on the taffrail, I saw the day dying
Like a flock of gay birds round the royal yards flying;
High over the sunset I saw the young moon,
...
The ships he served of old,
When blood was young and hot,
Long wrecked or scrapped or sold;
Their very names forgot;
...
'Don't sound,' old Job, the ringer, said,
'No muffled peal for I,
But pull your lustiest, lads, instead,
When I do come to die,'
...
They cheered her from the waterside,
They watched her from the shore
Drop swiftly down the Mersey tide
Till she was seen no more,
...
By Chinese Charley's junk-store, by the Panama Saloon,
Where 'longshore loafers lean and spit, at morning, night, and noon, -
...
They are going to pull down the old rectory next year,
So I hear,
And put up an ugly little red
...
By Murphy’s Hotel as I loitered along
I heard an old shellback a-singing his song,
A crazy old chorus, a song of no skill,
...
It was the old
Vindictive
out of Dover put to sea,
And she sailed to the Lowlands low,
...
Dear, O homeland, and dear, O sweet land of mine,
Dear, yea, very dear, O land of my birth;
But O strong and strange the voice that comes singing
...
Times, they say, must change, and folks must change with 'em too:
That's how it is in the West, now the old lights seem to fail:
...