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| ’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. | |
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| It was a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady and strong, | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| 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! | 10 |
| And the groaning water-ways told the strain that held her stout main-tack, | |
| But he only laughed as he glanced aloft at a white and silvery track. | |
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| The mid-tide meets in the Channel waves that flow from shore to shore, | |
| And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Featherstone to Dunmore, | |
| And that sterling light in Tusker Rock where the old bell tolls each hour, | 15 |
| And the beacon light that shone so bright was quench’d on Waterford Tower. | |
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| What looms upon our starboard bow? What hangs upon the breeze? | |
| ’T is time our good ship hauled her wind abreast the old Saltees, | |
| For by her ponderous press of sail and by her consorts four | |
| We saw our morning visitor was a British man-of-war. | 20 |
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| Up spake our noble Captain then, as a shot ahead of us past— | |
| “Haul snug your flowing courses! lay your topsail to the mast!” | |
| Those Englishmen gave three loud hurrahs from the deck of their covered ark, | |
| And we answered back by a solid broad-side from the decks of our patriot bark. | |
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| “Out booms! out booms!” our skipper cried, “out booms and give her sheet,” | 25 |
| And the swiftest keel that was ever launched shot ahead of the British fleet, | |
| And amidst a thundering shower of shot, with stun’-sails hoisting away, | |
| Down the North Channel Paul Jones did steer just at the break of day. | |
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