Sailor's tale

I am sailing on the sea

Where I’ve always liked to be

The sky’s blue above

And the water’s blue below

And there is unearthly silence

Wherever I go

 

Even if a storm comes

Why should I be scared?

Even if it awakened the deep

I would already have done and dared

I shall ride the crisis, and sleep

And my courage, permanently keep

 

I’m tired of the dull, tame shore

That closes all adventures’ door

And hearing ballad and lore

I’d longed for the sea, more and more

Like an exile longs for his land

Or a cast-away remembers his band

 

And like a bird that seeks its nest

Back I go to her billowy breast-

For the shore holds no excitement for me

A mother she was, and still is to me,

It’s the vast open ocean which I’ve always hailed

And over a million knots, have I now sailed.