Half Moon

The skies are clearer here my friend

We’re sailing on to the bitter end

Leaving Manahatta to the trappers and the cackling geese

There’s a passage to the North we’re told

We go where Henry Hudson goes

Amsterdam is dreaming of gold and the mystical East

Land this good to cultivate

Ought to make you happy to stop and pray

Cut a little cabin, grow corn and pumpkin and bean

I can see him standing there

He’s a chief among the Delaware

His eye on the river, hickory smoke on the breeze

Half Moon

A boat from the Zuider Zee

Half Moon

The day will come when she sets us free

My name is Robert, I’m a Limehouse man

My shipmates come from the Netherlands

Excepting Mr Coleman - we buried him there on the shore

He took an arrow to the throat

For threatening the natives from a rowing boat

And after that our company elected to stay safe on board

We gave them pots and pans and seed

They paid in venison and clamshell beads

The free and mighty river shivering beneath our feet

Sixteen men on a dead man’s trail

Eyes in the forest as we set sail

Sounding every fathom from the bay to the cold water sea

The day will come when she sets us free

The day will come when we set him free

A little boat drifting on an open sea