Читать книгу Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land - Charles Godfrey Leland - Страница 5

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The Albatross

Is the captain and boss,

Haul away boys, haul away!

The sea-gull queers

Are the officeers,

Haul away boys, haul away!

And the Carey chickens as I guess

Is every one an A.B.S.,

Haul away boys, haul away!

“I’ve heard,” said Chapin, “many folk agree,

Those birds are souls of sailors lost at sea,

And often one around the vessel flies

To give us warning ere the storms arise.”

“Talkin’ of spirits in the vasty deep,”

Said Ezra Bullard, late of Marblehead,

“There’s one at least who never goes to sleep,

And mighty little good of him is said;

His special dispensation is to watch

The bottom of the ocean, and to see

It don’t fall out—for if it did we catch

The very direst kind of misery,

For all the water runnin’ through the hole

Would leave it dry as you can understand,

And from the Arctic to the ’tother pole,

’Twould be one thunderin’ lot of empty land.”

And thereupon in his south-wester tones

He let us have the song of Davy Jones.