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