Come all you wild young men and a warning take by me

Never lead your single life astray or into bad company

As I myself have done, being all in the month of May

When I, as pressed by a sea captain, a privateer to trade

To the East Indies we were bound to plunder the raging main

And it's many the brave and a galliant ship we sent to a watery grave

Ah, for Freeport we did steer, our provisions to renew

When we did spy a bold man-of-war sailing three feet to our two



Oh, she fired across our bows, "Heave to and don't refuse

Surrender now unto my command or else your lives you'll lose"

And our decks they were sputtered with blood and the cannons did loudly roar

And broadside and broadside a long time we lay till we could fight no more

And a thousand times I wished myself alone, all alone with my Polly on the shore



She's a tall and a slender girl with a dark and a-rolling eye

And here am I, a-bleeding on the deck and for a sweet saint must lie

Farewell, my family and my friends, likewise my barley too

I'd never have crossed the salt sea wide if I'd have been ruled by you

And a thousand times I saw myself again, all alone with my Polly on the shore