OK, I'm still hoping for Dick to come in and give us the exact text. In the meantime, I thought I'd try a transcription. Please let me know any corrections you can suggest, and I'll edit them in. "From the mast on down straight shore" has me stumped - maybe "Dunn Strait," but then I can't make sense of the rest of it.
Yes, it's a good thing to buy the CD, but it takes a lot to understand the song without looking at a text. I can understand better when I hear a song in concert - but I can't learn a song from a recording unless I make an effort to transcribe it. I wish Dave and Anni put lyrics in their CD booklets.
Dave has a songbook available for $12, but it has only 20 songs or so, only ones he wrote himself.
-Joe Offer-

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OLD FIGUREHEAD CARVER
(Hiram Cody / Dick Swain)

I have done my share of carving figureheads of quaint design
For the Olives and the Ruddicks, and the famous Black Ball Line
Brigantines and barks and clippers, brigs and schooners, lithe and tall
But the bounding Marco Polo was the flower of them all.

CHORUS
While my hands are steady, while my eyes are good,
I will carve the music of the wind into the wood.

I can see that white-winged clipper reeling under scudding clouds
Tramping down a hazy skyline with a Norther in her shrouds
I can feel her lines of beauty, see her flecked with spume and brine
As she drives her scuppers under, and that figurehead of mine.

Was of seasoned pine I made it, clear from outer bark to core
From the finest piece of timber, from the mast-pond on Straight Shore
Every bite of axe or chisel, every ringing mallet welt
Wrought from out that block of timber all the spirit that I felt.

I heard read of Marco Polo, til his daring deeds were mine
And I say them all a-glowing in that balsam-scented pine
Saw his eyes alight with purpose, facing every vagrant breeze
Saw him lilting free and careless over all the seven seas.

That was how I did my carving, beat of heart and stroke of hand
Putting into life and action all the purpose that I planned
Flowing robes and wind-tossed tresses, forms of beauty, strength, design
I saw them all and tried to carve them in that figurehead of mine.

And when my hands are feeble, and my outward eyes grow dim
I will see again those clippers reeling o'er the ocean's rim
Great white fleet of sailing rovers, wind above and surf beneath
With the Marco Polo leading, and my carving in her teeth.


Transcribed by ear from Away From It All a CD recorded in 2002 by Dave Webber and Anni Fentiman, www.oldandnewtradition.com

Notes from Webber/Fentiman: Our friend Dick Swain of Pennsylvania found this poem by the Reverend Hiram Cody of Fredericton, New Brunswick. The great merchant ship, the Marco Polo, was built close to St. John. It would be nice to think that Cody may have had some personal knowledge of the ship, who knows! Dick put this tune to the poem and contributed the wonderful chorus. We love this song and hope you will too.

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