|
A life on the ocean wave! A home on the rolling deep! |: Where the scatter'd waters rave, And the winds their revels keep! :| Like an eagle cag'd I pine, On this dull unchanging shore, Oh! give me the flashing brine, The spray and the tempest's roar, A life on the ocean wave! A home on the rolling deep! Where the scatter'd waters rave, And the winds their revels keep, |: The winds, the winds The winds their revels keep! :| |
Once more on the deck I stand Of my own swift gliding craft, |: Set sail! farewell to the land, The gale follows fair abaft. :| We shoot thro' the sparkling foam, Like an ocean-bird set free, Like the ocean-bird, our home We'll find far out on the sea! A life on the ocean wave! . . . . The land is no longer in view, The clouds have begun to frown, |: But with a stout vessel and crew We'll say, let the storm come down! :| And the song of our hearts shall be While the winds and the waters rave, A life on the heaving sea! A home on the bounding wave! A life on the ocean wave! . . . . |
|
The words of 'A Life on the Ocean Wave!' were presented to the composer, Henry Russell, by the poet after they had been rejected by a publisher. Russell, an Englishman by birth, was seeking his fortune in America and took the manuscript of the poem into a Broadway music store where, in his own words: "I was invited into a back room where there was a capital piano. I hummed an air or two, ran my fingers over the keys, then stopped, feeling baffled; suddenly an idea struck me and presently touching the keys with a confident exclamation, that bright little air rang out which is now so well known." |
| Deutsche Volkslieder
| Ahnenforschung
| Ferienaufenthalt
| Folksongs
| Hymns
| Genealogy
| Pacific Holiday
| HOME PAGE
| SEARCH
| Email
| Bridge
| Forum
|