Hand in Hand/When My Ship Comes Home from Sea
"When My Ship Comes Home from Sea"
"O A golden comb for golden hair,
And milk-white pearls for a neck as fair;
And silver chains, and all for me,
The day my ship comes home from sea!
"O silken 'broideries, green and blue,
And wrought with crimson thro' and thro',
With coral and amber; all for me,
The day my ship comes home from sea!"
"And where is the good ship sailing from
That brings these brave things safely home?
And by what name do you hail her free,
And who is her captain on the sea?"
"My ship comes sailing from the West,
And her name is called 'The Sailor's Rest';
And the bravest man of all her crew,
Her captain, is my lover true."
"O never will that ship come home,
Wherever she be sailing from;
I warmed my hands beneath the stars,
By a fire made of her broken spars.
"And three days dead the Captain lay,
But how he died no man may say:
I laid him out by the pale moon-rise,
And made a shroud of the 'broideries.
"With coral and gold I weighted him,
And still he was light enough to swim,
With silver chains I bound him down,
There was never a corpse so hard to drown.
"His black hair lines an eagle's nest
On a sea girt cliff in the lonesome west;
Now, jet for coral there must be,
And instead of amber, ebony."