Up and Away in the Morning

Up and Away in the Morning

Now when I was a young man, we lived near the sea strand

and my folks kept a tavern called the Admiral's Head

and old salts by the fireside would tell of the seas wide

the far foreign shores and the lives that they've led

Well I walked into Bristol with cutlass and pistol,

a new bosun's whistle and a swaggering stride.

and without too much censure I soon was indentured

and embarked for adventure on a bright morning's tide

After two months' hard toil, we docked in Port Royal

our virtues to spoil or at least to curtail

but the trouble with the boisterous sailors who're roysters

the choice is to run or to end up in jail

Now some say the sea is a sickness but we

feel the thickness of wits lest we're shortening sail

and we sea the sea glint, the fo'cstle and bowsprit

and our course is well plotted and runs fore the gale

and the ship may well take ya from here to Jamaica, 

where the storms and the waves they will toss ya and shake ya

and you do desperate deeds for which God might forsake ya

but there's nowhere that we'd rather be-e-e

and it's up and away in the mornin'