Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/70

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Y, ay, I'll tell you, shipmates,
 * If you care to hear the tale,

How myself and the royal yard alone
 * Were left of the old Narwhale.

"A stouter ship was never launched
 * Of all the Clyde-built whalers;

And forty years of a life at sea
 * Haven't matched her crowd of sailors.

Picked men they were, all young and strong,
 * And used to the wildest seas.

From Donegal and the Scottish coast,
 * And the rugged Hebrides.

Such men as women cling to, mates,
 * Like ivy round their lives:

And the day we sailed, the quays were lined
 * With weeping mothers and wives.