Lay me in the sheets and row me,
    With the tiller in my hand,
    Row me in below the beacon
    Where my sea-dogs used to land.

    Has your captain lost his cunning
    After leading you so far? 
    Row me your last league, my sea-kings;
    It is safe within the bar.

    Shoulder me and house me hillward,
    Where the field-lark makes his bed,
    So the gulls can wheel above me,
    All day long when I am dead;

    Where the keening wind can find me
    With the April rain for guide,
    And come crooning her old stories
    Of the kingdoms of the tide.

    Comrades, comrades, have me buried
    Like a warrior of the sun;
    I have carried my sealed orders
    Till the last command is done.

    Kiss me on the cheek for courage,
    (There is none to greet me home,)
    Then farewell to your old lover
    Of the thunder of the foam;

    For the grass is full of slumber
    In the twilight world for me,
    And my tired hands are slackened
    From their toiling on the sea.

OUTBOUND

    A lonely sail in the vast sea-room,
    I have put out for the port of gloom.

    The voyage is far on the trackless tide,
    The watch is long, and the seas are wide.

    The headlands blue in the sinking day
    Kiss me a hand on the outward way.

    The fading gulls, as they dip and veer,
    Lift me a voice that is good to hear.

    The great winds come, and the heaving sea,
    The restless mother, is calling me.

    The cry of her heart is lone and wild,
    Searching the night for her wandered child.

    Beautiful, weariless mother of mine,
    In the drift of doom I am here, I am thine.

    Beyond the fathom of hope or fear,
    From bourn to bourn of the dusk I steer,

    Swept on in the wake of the stars, in the stream
    Of a roving tide, from dream to dream.