From "Vainglorious"
I was but the child of a teenage parlor maid
When brought to the lighthouse, apprenticed to trade
Trimming wicks with the head keeper's niece
Our hands grew soft with kerosene grease
Her brother, quite able, the watch room did tend
When sweetly he bade me the clockworks to mend
There I suffered a feeling most rare
When touched I his auburn brown hair
So climb I up to the parapet, rags to burn
The sea roars in anger, the swell at thy stern
For The Gem returns, with her the fate of forty souls
And if they espy not my beacon
My love will be dashed on the shoals
The keeper fell to phthsis, his niece to the sprue
And still I held secret my love ever true
For to twelve months of mourning you swore
Both then came the cannons of war
My love was conscripted to duty at sea
Even pressed into service, I confessed not to thee
Three years in the lamp room spent I
Though embargoed our barrels ran dry
So climb I up to the parapet, rags to burn
The sea roars in anger, the swell at thy stern
For The Gem returns, with her the fate of forty souls
And if they espy not my beacon
My love will be dashed on the shoals
Then one night I saw through the menacing black
The Gem of the Argosy shepherd you back
Through the gales so ferociously high
And the storm drawing waves to the sky
The argand lamp faltered with no kerosene
So I stole to my hope chest and plundered it clean
For the gown I had sewn for our troth
Would burn as my unspoken oath
So climb I up to the parapet, rags to burn
The sea roars in anger, the swell at thy stern
For The Gem returns, with her the fate of forty souls
And if they espy not my beacon
My love will be dashed on the shoals
(Greg Kutcher - autoharp, mandolin, electric guitar
Lauren London - vocals)
Copyright 2011 Zach London
