A Sailor's Ballad

Five long years
On a boat called The Spanish Pony
I heard my lover's sad voice
Come calling out to me
Across the waves
And the shores of abolone
She bid me to return to her
And end my days at sea

On we sailed
Through the straits of old Gibraltar
Up through the North Atlantic
'Til we found the Labrador
Still she called
Like the fiddles of Cape Breton
Come home to your New England
And fare the seas no more

Once I lived
For the faro and the whiskey
And the swinging of a hammock
'Neath a canvas made of stars
'Til she rolled in
Like the wagon wheels on South Street
And she swept me off of my feet
To the sound of ten guitars

So home I came
To the oxen and the plowshare
To make my honest living
My promises to keep
But still I dream
Of the crying gulls and briny
Recalling that my truest love
Once was the ocean deep