The Mariner's Song of Departure

While o'er the bright bay,
With her streamers at play,
Our bark in her beauty is gliding,
As brothers, are we,
The glad sons of the sea,
Our own darling element riding.

Good pilot, adieu;
For the skies are all blue;
And yonder, blue billows are bounding,
We speed from the port,
To be off by the fort,
While her gun to the sunrise is sounding.

We leave all behind,
That a warm heart can bind,
In home, love, and friendship endearing;
While hope flies before,
For a far, foreign shore,
As the hand at the rudder is steering.

And well do we know
The proud waters below,
That hence are by us to be ridden;
'Mid the corals and caves
There are mariners' graves,
Dark wrecks, and lost treasures deep hidden.

Yet, before our frail bark,
Be the way light or dark,
Our Sun, and the Starthat we follow,
Is He, who unbinds
Or enchains the strong winds;
Whose hand holds the seas in its hollow.

If o'er the bright skies
The wild storm-spirit rise,
And spread his black wings full of thunder,
Our canvass we'll reef,
Or heave-to for relief,
And safely his pinions pass under.

And so, 'mid the strife
On the flood-waves of life,
To Heaven in our ark lowly bending
For help would we cry,
Till the dove, from on high,
Appears with the peace-branch descending,

Thus, we've friend, love, and home,
Wheresoe'er we may roam
The wide seas, from pole to equator—
We've a light, and high-tower,
In the name and the power
Of him, who is ocean's Creator.