Classic Poem

Half a hundred terrible pig-tails, pirates famous in song and story,
Hoisting the old black flag once more, in a palmy harbour of Caribbee,
"Farewell" we waved to our brown-skinned lasses, and chorussing out to
the billows of glory,
Billows a-glitter with rum and gold, we followed the sunset over the sea.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred broad-sheet pirates
When the world was young!

Sea-roads plated with pieces of eight that rolled to a heaven by rum
made mellow,
Heaved and coloured our barque's black nose where the Lascar sang
to a twinkling star,
And the tangled bow-sprit plunged and dipped its point in the west's
wild red and yellow,
Till the curved white moon crept out astern like a naked knife
from a blue cymar.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred terrible pirates
When the world was young!

Half a hundred tarry pig-tails, Teach, the chewer of glass, had taught us,
Taught us to balance the plank ye walk, your little plank-bridge
to Kingdom Come:
Half a score had sailed with Flint, and a dozen or so the devil
had brought us
Back from the pit where Blackbeard lay, in Beelzebub's bosom,
a-screech for rum.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred piping pirates
When the world was young!

There was Captain Hook (of whom ye have heard--so called from his terrible
cold steel twister,
His own right hand having gone to a shark with a taste for skippers
on pirate-trips),
There was Silver himself, with his cruel crutch, and the blind man Pew,
with a phiz like a blister,
Gouged and white and dreadfully dried in the reek of a thousand
burning ships.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred cut-throat pirates
When the world was young!

With our silver buckles and French cocked hats and our skirted coats
(they were growing greener,
But green and gold look well when spliced! We'd trimmed 'em up
wi' some fine fresh lace)
Bravely over the seas we danced to the horn-pipe tune of a concertina,
Cutlasses jetting beneath our skirts and cambric handkerchiefs
all in place.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred elegant pirates
When the world was young!

And our black prow grated, one golden noon, on the happiest isle of
the Happy Islands,
An isle of Paradise, fair as a gem, on the sparkling breast of the
wine-dark deep,
An isle of blossom and yellow sand, and enchanted vines on the purple
highlands,
Wi' grapes like melons, nay clustering suns, a-sprawl over cliffs in
their noonday sleep.

While earth goes round let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred dream-struck pirates
When the world was young!

And lo! on the soft warm edge of the sand, where the sea like wine
in a golden noggin
Creamed, and the rainbow-bubbles clung to his flame-red hair,
a white youth lay,
Sleeping; and now, as his drowsy grip relaxed, the cup that he
squeezed his grog in
Slipped from his hand and its purple dregs were mixed with the flames
and flakes of spray.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred diffident pirates
When the world was young!

And we suddenly saw (had we seen them before? They were coloured like
sand or the pelt on his shoulders)
His head was pillowed on two great leopards, whose breathing rose
and sank with his own;
Now a pirate is bold, but the vision was rum and would call for rum
in the best of beholders,
And it seemed we had seen Him before, in a dream, with that flame-red
hair and that vine-leaf crown.

And the earth went round, and the rum went round,
And softlier now we sung:
Half a hundred awe-struck pirates
When the world was young!

Now Timothy Hook (of whom ye have heard, with his talon of steel)
our doughty skipper,
A man that, in youth being brought up pious, had many a book on
his cabin-shelf,
Suddenly caught at a comrade's hand with the tearing claws of his
cold steel flipper
And cried, "Great Thunder and Brimstone, boys, I've hit it at last!
'Tis Bacchus himself."

And the earth went round, and the rum went round,
And never a word we sung:
Half a hundred tottering pirates
When the world was young!

He flung his French cocked hat i' the foam (though its lace was the best
of his wearing apparel):
We stared at him--Bacchus! The sea reeled round like a wine-vat
splashing with purple dreams,
And the sunset-skies were dashed with blood of the grape as the sun
like a new-staved barrel
Flooded the tumbling West with wine and spattered the clouds with
crimson gleams.

And the earth went round, and our heads went round,
And never a word we sung:
Half a hundred staggering pirates
When the world was young!

Down to the ship for a fishing-net our crafty Hook sent Silver leaping;
Back he came on his pounding crutch, for all the world like a kangaroo;
And we caught the net and up to the Sleeper on hands and knees we all
went creeping,
Flung it across him and staked it down! 'Twas the best of our dreams
and the dream was true.

And the earth went round, and the rum went round,
And loudly now we sung:
Half a hundred jubilant pirates
When the world was young!

We had caught our god, and we got him aboard ere he woke (he was more
than a little heavy);
Glittering, beautiful, flushed he lay in the lurching bows of
the old black barque,
As the sunset died and the white moon dawned, and we saw on the island
a star-bright bevy
Of naked Bacchanals stealing to watch through the whispering vines in
the purple dark!

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our capstan song we sung:
Half a hundred innocent pirates
When the world was young!

Beautiful under the sailing moon, in the tangled net, with the leopards
beside him,
Snared like a wild young red-lipped merman, wilful, petulant,
flushed he lay;
While Silver and Hook in their big sea-boots and their boat-cloaks
guarded and gleefully eyed him,
Thinking what Bacchus might do for a seaman, like standing him drinks,
as a man might say.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
We sailed away and sung:
Half a hundred fanciful pirates
When the world was young!

All the grog that ever was heard of, gods, was it stowed in our
sure possession?
O, the pictures that broached the skies and poured their colours
across our dreams!
O, the thoughts that tapped the sunset, and rolled like a great
torchlight procession
Down our throats in a glory of glories, a roaring splendour
of golden streams!

And the earth went round, and the stars went round,
As we hauled the sheets and sung:
Half a hundred infinite pirates
When the world was young!

Beautiful, white, at the break of day, He woke and, the net in a
smoke dissolving,
He rose like a flame, with his yellow-eyed pards and his
flame-red hair like a windy dawn,
And the crew kept back, respectful like, till the leopards advanced
with their eyes revolving,
Then up the rigging went Silver and Hook, and the rest of us followed
with case-knives drawn.

While earth goes round, let rum go round,
Our cross-tree song we sung:
Half a hundred terrified pirates
When the world was young!

And "Take me home to my happy island!" he says. "Not I," sings Hook,
"by thunder;
We'll take you home to a happier isle, our palmy harbour of Caribbee!"
"You won't!" says Bacchus, and quick as a dream the planks of the deck just
heaved asunder,
And a mighty Vine came straggling up that grew from the depths of
the wine-dark sea.

And the sea went round, and the skies went round,
As our cross-tree song we sung:
Half a hundred horrified pirates
When the world was young!

We were anchored fast as an oak on land, and the branches clutched and
the tendrils quickened,
And bound us writhing like snakes to the spars! Ay, we hacked with our
knives at the boughs in vain,
And Bacchus laughed loud on the decks below, as ever the tough sprays
tightened and thickened,
And the blazing hours went by, and we gaped with thirst and our ribs
were racked with pain

And the skies went round, and the sea swam round,
And we knew not what we sung:
Half a hundred lunatic pirates
When the world was young!

Bunch upon bunch of sunlike grapes, as we writhed and struggled and raved
and strangled,
Bunch upon bunch of gold and purple daubed its bloom on our baked
black lips.
Clustering grapes, O, bigger than pumpkins, just out of reach they
bobbed and dangled
Over the vine-entangled sails of that most dumbfounded of pirate ships!

And the sun went round, and the moon came round,
And mocked us where we hung:
Half a hundred maniac pirates
When the world was young!

Over the waters the white moon winked its bruised old eye at our
bowery prison,
When suddenly we were aware of a light such as never a moon
or a ship's lamp throws,
And a shallop of pearl, like a Nautilus shell, came shimmering up
as by magic arisen,
With sails: of silk and a glory around it that turned the sea
to a rippling rose.

And our heads went round, and the stars went round,
At the song that cruiser sung:
Half a hundred goggle-eyed pirates
When the world was young!

Half a hundred rose-white Bacchanals hauled the ropes of that rosy cruiser!
Over the seas they came and laid their little white hands on the old
black barque;
And Bacchus he ups and he steps aboard: "Hi, stop!" cries Hook,
"you frantic old boozer!
Belay, below there, don't you go and leave poor pirates to
die in the dark!"

And the moon went round, and the stars went round,
As they all pushed off and sung:
Half a hundred ribbonless Bacchanals
When the world was young!

Over the seas they went and Bacchus he stands, with his yellow-eyed
leopards beside him,
High on the poop of rose and pearl, and kisses his hand to us,
pleasant as pie!
While the Bacchanals danced to their tambourines, and the vine-leaves
flew, and Hook just eyed him
Once, as a man that was brought up pious, and scornfully hollers,
"Well, you ain't shy!"

For all around him, vine-leaf crowned,
The wild white Bacchanals flung!
Nor it wasn't a sight for respectable pirates
When the world was young!

All around that rainbow-Nautilus rippled the bloom of a thousand roses,
Nay, but the sparkle of fairy sea-nymphs breasting a fairy-like
sea of wine,
Swimming around it in murmuring thousands, with white arms tossing;
till--all that we knows is
The light went out, and the night was dark, and the grapes had
burst and their juice was--brine!

And the vines that bound our bodies round
Were plain wet ropes that clung,
Squeezing the light out o' fifty pirates
When the world was young!

Over the seas in the pomp of dawn a king's ship came with her proud
flag flying.
Cloud upon cloud we watched her tower with her belts and her crowded
zones of sail;
And an A.B. perched in a white crow's nest, with a brass-rimmed
spy-glass quietly spying,
As we swallowed the lumps in our choking throats and uttered
our last faint feeble hail!

And our heads went round as the ship went round,
And we thought how coves had swung:
All for playing at broad-sheet pirates
When the world was young!

Half a hundred trembling corsairs, all cut loose, but a trifle giddy,
We lands on their trim white decks at last and the bo'sun he whistles us
good hot grog,
And we tries to confess, but there wasn't a soul from the Admiral's
self to the gold-laced middy
But says, "They're delirious still, poor chaps," and the Cap'n he
enters the fact in his log,

That his boat's crew found us nearly drowned
In a barrel without a bung--
Half a hundred suffering sea-cooks
When the world was young!

So we sailed by Execution Dock, where the swinging pirates haughty
and scornful
Rattled their chains, and on Margate beach we came like a school-treat
safe to land;
And one of us took to religion at once; and the rest of the crew, tho'
their hearts were mournful,
Capered about as Christy Minstrels, while Hook conducted the big
brass band.

And the sun went round, and the moon went round,
And, O, 'twas a thought that stung!
There was none to believe we were broad-sheet pirates
When the world was young!

Ah, yet (if ye stand me a noggin of rum) shall the old Blue Dolphin echo
the story!
We'll hoist the white cross-bones again in our palmy harbour of Caribbee!
We'll wave farewell to our brown-skinned lasses and, chorussing out to the
billows of glory,
Billows a-glitter with rum and gold, we'll follow the sunset over the sea!

While earth goes round, let rum go round!
O, sing it as we sung!
Half a hundred terrible pirates
When the world was young!