A great while ago there was a schoolboy <br />who lived in a cottage by the sea, <br />And the very first thing he could remember <br />was the rigging of the schooners by the quay. <br />He could watch 'em from his bedroom window <br />with the big cranes a-hauling out the freight, <br />And he used to dream of shipping as a sea-cook <br />and a-sailing for the Golden Gate. <br /> <br />He used to buy the yellow penny dreadfuls, <br />he'd read 'em where he fished for conger eels, <br />As he listened to the slapping of the water <br />the green and oily water round the keels, <br />There were trawlers with their shark-mouthed flatfish <br />and the nets a-hanging out to dry, <br />And the skate the skipper kept because he liked 'em <br />and the landsmen never knew which ones to fry. <br />There were brigantines with timber out of Norway <br />just oozing with the syrups of the pine, <br />There were rusty dusty freighters out of Sunderland <br />and clippers of the Blue Cross Line. <br /> <br />To tumble down the hatch into a cabin <br />was better than the best of broken rules, <br />For the smell of 'em was like a Christmas dinner <br />and the feel of 'em was like a box of tools, <br />And before he went to sleep in the evenings <br />the last thing that he would ever see, <br />Was the sailormen a-dancing in the moonlight <br />by the capstan that stood beside the quay. <br /> <br />Now he's sitting on a high-stool in London, <br />the Golden Gate is far away, <br />For they caught him like a squirrel and they caged him, <br />now he's totting up accounts and turning grey, <br />And he'll never get to San Francisco <br />and the last thing that he will ever see, <br />Is the sailormen a-dancing in the moonlight <br />by the capstan that stands beside the quay. <br />To the tune of the old concertina <br />by the capstan that stands beside the quay.<br /><br />Alfred Noyes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-grey-squirrel/
