Song of the Gentle Leviathan

There once was a time on a cold grey sea
When men went out in boats of three,
With oars of ash and a hemp-rope coil
And iron heads for blood and oil.

Oh haul away, lads, haul away down,
The Wellerman comes when the work is done,
When the tongue’n is cut and the flensing’s begun,
Oh hold fast, boys, and pray for sun.

They found her rising at break of day,
A mountain of breath in a skin of grey,
She sounded deep, then rolled once more,
And the sea went still where she lay before.

The first iron flew and the second too,
And the water bloomed a darker blue,
She thrashed and turned in her mortal pain
Till the sea was rope and the rope was strain.

Oh haul away, lads, haul away slow,
Greed is a wind that a man won’t know,
We sing of profit, we sing of gain,
But the sea keeps count of every stain.

The boat ran close in the killing press,
Too near the flukes, too deep the mess,
One blow would have sent them to the deep,
To the cold black hold where the drowned men sleep.

But the whale rolled clear though the iron burned,
She held her body, she checked her turn,
She lifted her tail, then eased it down,
So the fragile boat stayed righted and sound.

No hand of hers was raised in hate,
No thought of vengeance, no thirst for fate,
Though speared and dying, she chose restraint,
While men cried out for oil and weight.

Oh haul away, lads, haul away blind,
We name it courage, we name it kind,
But what is a man when the beast he slays
Shows more care in its final days?

They took her tongue when the breath went thin,
They stripped the blubber, the bone, the skin,
And the Wellerman came with sugar and rum
To pay the price when the work was done.

But the sea remembers what men forget,
The balance broken, the quiet debt,
And somewhere deep in the turning tide
Drifts the mercy that the whale supplied.

So sing this song when the night winds moan,
Of the care she showed we’ve never shown,
That even dying, harpooned and torn,
She kept men safe who never learned.

Oh haul away, lads, haul away true,
Let one tear fall in the salt-spray too,
For the whale that died so men could take,
Yet spared their lives for mercy’s sake.