Home Is the Sailor

Bill he was a sailor come home from the sea
The last of the old timers with his tales and his memories
He'd sailed the western ocean and all the seven seas
A rover on the rolling deep not a place that he hadn't been

Now the young ones loved to listen to his stories and his tales
About the south- sea islands, the mermaids and the whales
The waste of war and the times on shore, the rites of passage won
The northern lights in the arctic night and the land of the midnight sun

Home is the sailor, he's come home from the sea
Thrown up by the ocean like a wave up to the shore
He'd watch the far horizon for hours at the harbour wall
And those who thought that they knew him, well
They never knew him at all

They say he never married no he never took a wife
The ocean was his mistress and he loved her all of his life
When the time it came to leave her as he knew it would some day
It broke his heart when they said goodbye and they went their separate ways

He tried hard to forget her but she wouldn't let him go
He heard her plain when the wind and rain from over the sea did blow
His course was set from the day they met by the stars in the northern sky
He knew they'd meet again someday, you could tell by the look in his eye

Bill he took to drinking, it helped the hours pass
Some vision of the future lay at the bottom of his whiskey glass
He swore that he saw paradise and he called it fiddlers green
Said it was the finest place that he'd ever seen

Now some men wear their troubles like a mask upon their face
And some they hide what they feel inside and lock away all trace
We knew that Bill was sinking, that life had lost its fun
It seemed his song was ended, his race was almost run

Then news came through one morning, they'd seen him in the tide
Then they lost all trace in it's cold embrace, couldn't save him if they tried
Just what he'd been thinking there's no tongue can tell
There's some that say that they saw him jump and others say he fell

Home is the sailor, he's gone back to the sea
Gone back to what he always knew would be his destiny
Far from the far horizon, far from the harbour wall
And those who thought that they knew him well
They never knew him at all
Those who thought that they knew him
They never knew him at all