Here's another one by Burt Franklin Jenness. This one seems to go well to the tune of "Darling Nellie Grey" but most of this poets work is easily adapted to alternative tunes:

Poem by Burt Franklin Jenness
From SEA LANES, edited by Burt Franklin Jenness,
The Churchill Publishing Co., Boston, US, © 1921, pp. 12-13.

THE SEAMAN'S HOUR

When the day's trick is over and the running lights are lit,
And the rigging fore and aft is trim and tight;
When the evening watch is posted and the gear is weather fit,
And the crew is gathered forward for the night,
And the smoking lamp is burning and the hammocks there are swinging –
Then a man may know his shipmates as they are;
For the fellowship grows mellow with the songs the gang is singing,
And the sailorman gets out his old guitar.

When the blue smoke is curling to the girders overhead,
And the berth-deck is merry with the din
Of the laughter, song and story, ere the bugle blows for bed –
Then the strains from the old guitar begin,
And you hear the pine trees whisper, out beneath the stars alone,
Or the notes from famous concert halls afar,
Till he thrums and sets a-quiver every heart-string with a tone –
When a shipmate plays upon his old guitar.

As he sits on his ditty box and smokes his cigarette
He will strike the chords that somehow set you wild;
For they conjure up the faces and the scenes you can't forget
Till the fragments of the world are 'round you piled;
Streets and restaurants and theatres, every rendez-vous of town,
And the glamour of the life you left ashore.
He can lift you from the depths of thought or send you crashing down;
He can bring you hopes you never dreamed before.

He can make you forget that you ever learned to hate,
That you ever had a hurt to reconcile –
And you swing your hammock, happy, up along-side your mate –
When you've listened to his old guitar a while,
And you take the road to slumber through the gates of memory,
As you watch, out through the port, some reeling star;
And you hear the distant beating of a swiftly running sea,
Like the music of a far away guitar.

It seems like not just Mudcatters have these thoughts, and Jenness was composing his poems back in World War 1 while he was serving in the U.S. Navy.

Pretty neat!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble