I'm a tough old salt, and it's never I care
A penny which way the wind is,
Or whether I sight Cape Finisterre,
Or make a port at the Indies.

Some folks steer for a port to trade,
And some steer north for the whaling;
Yet never I care a damn just where
I sail, so long's I'm sailing.

You never can stop the wind when it blows,
And you can't stop the rain from raining;
Then why, oh, why, go a-piping of your eye
When there's no sort o' use in complaining?

My face is browned and my lungs are sound,
And my hands they are big and calloused.
I've a little brown jug I sometimes hug,
And a little bread and meat for ballast.

But I keep no log of my daily grog,
For what's the use o' being bothered?
I drink a little more when the wind's offshore,
And most when the wind's from the no'th'ard.

Of course with a chill if I'm took quite ill,
And my legs get weak and toddly,
At the jug I pull, and turn in full,
And sleep the sleep of the godly.

But whether I do or whether I don't,
Or whether the jug's my failing,
It's never I care a damn just where
I sail, so long's I'm sailing.

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn,
There are English counties like hunting-tunes
Played on the keys of a postboy's horn,
But I will remember where I was born.

I will remember Carquinez Straits,
Little French Lick and Lundy's Lane,
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane.
I will remember Skunktown Plain.

I will fall in love with a Salem tree
And a rawhide quirt from Santa Cruz,
I will get me a bottle of Boston sea
And a blue-gum nigger to sing me blues.
I am tired of loving a foreign muse.

Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard,
Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman's Oast,
It is a magic ghost you guard
But I am sick for a newer ghost,
Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.

Henry and John were never so
And Henry and John were always right?
Granted, but when it was time to go
And the tea and the laurels had stood all night,
Did they never watch for Nantucket Light?

I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmédy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.