The Yankee Man-of-War

’T is of a gallant Yankee ship that flew the stripes and stars,

And the whistling wind from the west-nor’-west blew through the pitch-pine spars.

With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung upon the gale,

On an autumn night we raised the light on the old head of Kinsale.

It was a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady and strong,

As gayly over the sparkling deep our good ship bowled along;

With the foaming seas beneath her bow the fiery waves she spread,

And bending low her bosom of snow, she buried her lee cat head.

There was no talk of short’ning sail by him who walked the poop,

And under the press of her pond’ring jib the boom bent like a hoop,

And the groaning water-ways told the strain that held her

stout main tack.

But he only laughed as he glanced abaft at a white and sil very track.

The mid-tide meets in the channel waves that flow from shore