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The buccaneer book: Songs of the black flag cover

The buccaneer book: Songs of the black flag

Chapter 6: “Sigh No More, Ladies”

By Alden Charles Noble

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About This Book

A sequence of poems that dramatizes life at sea through ballads, lyrics, and dramatic monologues focused on buccaneers, sailors, and the lawless world they inhabit. The pieces alternate between rollicking drinking songs and vivid battle and chase scenes, introspective meditations on exile, mortality, and lost love, and elegiac portraits of execution, marooning, and final rest. Several linked poems trace a seafaring romance and its breakup. Language shifts from brazen and celebratory to mournful and reflective, emphasizing comradeship, daring, greed, and the fatal costs of a life pursued on the open ocean.

“Sigh No More, Ladies”

The stars are like thine eyes, my dear,

That sparkle o’er the glass,

The night’s less fair than thy bright hair

So let reproaches pass;

I will avow I love thee now

But sorry rogues are men,

And I have loved before, my dear,

And I shall love again.

The bubbles are thy laugh, my dear,

That flash up in the wine,

I like to think that thee I drink

In every draught of mine;

I like to hear thy laughter clear

So laugh to please me, then,—

But I have loved before, my dear,

And I shall love again.

The sailor-man is free, my dear,

And sailor-men abound,

While I, my dear, am a buccaneer,

So let the glass go round;

I carry my trade, be it ship or maid,

In spite of gods and men,—

As I have loved before, my dear,

So I shall love again.

Kiss me again for luck, my dear,

And I will kiss for love,

For I have seen nor maid nor quean

Thy beauty’s not above;

I love, and yet, I shall forget

—And where is your beauty then?—

For I have loved before, my dear,

And I shall love again.