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