As The Sea Is My Mistress

By: Felix L. Perry

Gather round me young lads, pull ye up an empty keg

I’ll tell you of life at sea, of the mistress and the hag

Oh so cruel she’ll steel a young man’s heart away

Once he hears her siren call she’ll have her say

She’ll shackle his soul to the smell of the salt brine

Capture his mind to the lore of foreign women and wine

Ask him to sacrifice his very life in a gale of woe

When Neptune rolling seas will allow no man to sleep below

She’ll make him heed his Captain’s call to risk life and limb

To climb the widow maker’s rigging and sing a hymn

Ah but on those perfect days when the sky is blue

When white sails billow in the wind like they’re meant to do

When the sea birds sing to the hum of the shrouds

Far from the city smog and the bustling crowds

Yes me lads… ‘tis then you will know the kiss of the sea

Yes ‘tis only then… you will love her and forever you’ll be

The lover of the fair mistress of the blue

A sailor of the high seas forever to her true .