G'day again,

I forgot to change the most important point in Wolfgang's version ... for some reason Martyn sang "Cock of the North" instead of "Cock of the morning", as the original poem (written in the late 1950s) has it. I suspect it has to do with the persistence of a sort of Spoonerism, or transpositional error, with the first word of the first line and the third word of the second being transposed ... with disastrous results!

I still have a mental block with the author's name ... this is particularly frustrating as I was think of her only a few days ago. I have a strong mental picture ... but it has no name underneath!

I will try to get the words closer ... and separate the lines.


THE SAILOR HOME FROM THE SEA

1. Oh cock of the morning with a dream in your hand,
My love has come home, come ashore to the land
As he walks through the door with his eyes like the sun
And his kit bags crammed full of the treasures he's won.

2. There's a pearl shell from Broome and a tall Darwin tale,
Coral and clam and the jaws of a whale,
And our kitchen is full of the smell of the sea
And the leaping green fishes my love brings to me.

3. Oh tumble your treasures from Darwin and Broome,
And fill with your glory my strait little room
With the sun in the morning ablaze on your chest,
My love has come home from the north of northwest.

4. And deep in these beds we will love and we'll lie,
We'll kiss and we'll listen to the rain in the sky,
Warm as the summer, we'll hive winter long,
My love has come home like King Solomon's song.


Regards,

Bob Bolton