Old Grey Squirrel

A great while ago there was a school-boy.

He lived in a cottage by the sea.

And the very first thing he could remember

Was the rigging of the schooners by the quay.

He could watch them, when he woke, from his window,

With the tall cranes hoisting out the freight.

And he used to think of shipping as a sea-cook,

And sailing to the Golden Gate.

For he used to buy the yellow penny dreadfuls,

And read them where he fished for conger eels

And listened to the lapping of the water,

The green and oily water round the keels.

There were trawlers with their shark-mouthed flat-fish,

And the red nets hanging out to dry,

And the skate the skipper kept because he liked 'em,

And landsmen never knew the fish to fry.

There were brigantines with timber out of Norroway,

Oozing with the syrups of the pine.

There were rusty dusty schooners out of Sunderland,

And ships of the Blue Cross line.

And to tumble down a hatch into the cabin

Was better than the best of broken rules;

For the smell of 'em was like a Christmas dinner,

And the feel of 'em was like a box of tools.

And, before he went to sleep in the evening,

The very last thing that he could see

Was the sailor-men a-dancing in the moonlight

By the capstan that stood upon the quay.

He is perched on a high stool in London.

The Golden Gate is very far away.

They caught him, and they caged him, like a squirrel.

He is totting up accounts, and going grey.

He will never, never, never sail to 'Frisco.

But the very last thing that he will see

Will be sailor-men a-dancing in the sunrise

By the capstan that stands upon the quay . . .

To the tune of an old concertina,

By the capstan that stands upon the quay.