We were schooner-rigged and rakish, <br />with a long and lissome hull, <br />And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull; <br />We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, <br />And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. <br /> <br />We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, <br />We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip; <br />It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored, <br />But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard. <br /> <br />Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains, <br />And the paint-work all was spatter dashed with other peoples brains, <br />She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank. <br />And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank. <br /> <br />O! then it was (while standing by the taffrail on the poop) <br />We could hear the drowning folk lament the absent chicken coop; <br />Then, having washed the blood away, we'd little else to do <br />Than to dance a quiet hornpipe as the old salts taught us to. <br /> <br />O! the fiddle on the fo'c'sle, and the slapping naked soles, <br />And the genial "Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!" <br />With the silver seas around us and the pale moon overhead, <br />And the look-out not a-looking and his pipe-bowl glowing red. <br /> <br />Ah! the pig-tailed, quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played, <br />All have since been put a stop to by the naughty Board of Trade; <br />The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest, <br />A little south the sunset in the islands of the Blest.<br /><br />John Masefield<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-ballad-of-john-silver/
