The Long Road Home

There's a wind up and a sighing along the waterside,
And we're homeward bound at last on to-night's full tide:
Round the world and back again is very far to roam . . .
And San Juan Strait to England, it's a long road home!

We'll tow out to Flattery before the sun is high;
We'll shake the harbour dust away and give the land good-bye:
And singing in her topsails, O, the deep-sea wind'll come,
And lift us through it lively on the long road home.

The Old Man he goes smiling, for he's gathered in a crew:
We've various Turks and infidels, we've most things but a Jew:
He's got the pick of all the stiffs from Panama to Nome,
And we'll make them into sailors on the long road home.

The leaves that just are open now, they'll have to fade and fall,
There'll be reaping time and threshing time and ploughing time and all:
But we'll not see the harvest fields nor smell the fresh-cut loam:
We'll be rolling gun'le under on the long road home.

We've waited for a cargo and we've waited for a crew,
And last we've waited for a tide, and now the waiting's through:
O don't you hear the deep-sea wind and smell the deep-sea foam,
Out beyond the harbour on the long road home?

And it's "home, dearie, home" when the anchor rattles down,
In the reek of good old Mersey fog a-rolling rich and brown:
Round the world and back again is very far to roam . . .
And all the way to England it's a long way home!