We Have Fed Our Sea for a Thousand Years (words by Rudyard Kipling, music by Peter Bellamy) We have fed our sea for a thousand years And she calls still unfed Tho' there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead We have strawed our best to the weeds unrest To the shark and the sheering gull If blood be the price of admiralty Lord God, we ha' paid in full There's never a flood goes shoreward now But lifts a keel we manned There's never an ebb goes seaward now But drops our dead on the sand But slinks our dead on the sand forlorn From the Dulcies to the Swin If blood be the price of admiralty If blood be the price of admiralty Lord God, we ha' paid it in. We must feed our sea for a thousand years For that is our doom and pride As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind Or the wreck that struck last tide Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef Where the ghastly blue lights flare If blood be the price of admiralty If blood be the price of admiralty If blood be the price of admiralty Lord God, we ha' bought it fair. part of Kipling's Song of the English SOF
Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!