The Gem of the Argosy

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)