Romance And Reality

A boy there was and he went to sea With a head as full as a head could be Of all the yarns that ever he'd read By an inch of candle at night in bed . . . He thought a sailor had nothing to do When the wind was fair and the skies were blue But sit in the sun and watch the ship Sailing herself at a twelve-knot clip, With a song and a yarn and a hornpipe or so To liven him up when things got slow. He thought it sounded a first-rate notion To be cast away in the Southern Ocean And rig himself in a home-made trousseau And ramble round like Robinson Crusoe , With plenty of turtles' eggs to scoff Till a ship chanced by and took him off. He often dreamed about digging up gold The pirates hid in the days of old, Though why in thunder they went and hid it Nobody knows but the blokes that did it. But-there's not much time for hornpipe-dancing With a-hard-case mate that's always prancing And bawling round in a voice like thunder, 'Jump now, ye sojers, or stand from under!' And a length of rope's-end neatly planted Was all the livening-up he wanted. And the only island the ship went smash on It hadn't been furnished Crusoe fashion; There weren't any turtles' eggs on the beaches, Nor goats with skins to make into breeches; And after they'd lived a month or more On things they found on the rocks and the shore, Winkles and weed as salt as the dickens And penguins' eggs that were nearly chickens; Talk about islands-well, no one reckoned He ever wanted to sample a second . . . And he never had time nor he never had leisure For little matters like hunting treasure, So all the treasure ever he found While he was sailing the wide seas round Was a handful or two of pay to burn- Easy to spend but the devil to earn!- And a head as full as a head could be Of an old man's dreams of the ships and the sea.