Gold and silver are pledged to you, When my ship comes in; I pay with this promise for all you do, When my ship comes in. Oh, fairest partner man ever had, It's little I've brought you to make you glad Save the whispered suggestion in moments sad, When my ship comes in. Though crowded with treasures should be her hold, When my ship comes in, I never can pay for the charms of old, When my ship comes in. The strength I have taken from you has fled, The time for the joys that you craved has sped, I must pay for your gold with the dullest lead, When my ship comes in. Too late, too late will the treasures be, When my ship comes in. For Age shall stand with us on the quay, When my ship comes in. For the love you've given and the faith you've shown, But a glimpse of the joys that you might have known Will it then be yours on that day to own, When my ship comes in. The Children The children bring us laughter, and the children bring us tears; They string our joys, like jewels bright, upon the thread of years; They bring the bitterest cares we know, their mothers' sharpest pain, Then smile our world to loveliness, like sunshine after rain. The children make us what we are; the childless king is spurned; The children send us to the hills where glories may be earned; For them we pledge our lives to strife, for them do mothers fade, And count in new-born loveliness their sacrifice repaid. The children bring us back to God; in eyes that dance and shine Men read from day to day the proof of love and power divine; For them are fathers brave and good and mothers fair and true, For them is every cherished dream and every deed we do. For children are the furnace fires of life kept blazing high; For children on the battle fields are soldiers pleased to die; In every place where humans toil, in every dream and plan, The laughter of the children shapes the destiny of man. The Comedian Whatever the task and whatever the risk, wherever the flag's in air, The funny man with his sunny ways is sure to be laughing there. There are men who fret, there are men who dream, men making the best of it, But whether it's hunger or death they face, Or burning thirst in a desert place, There is always one, by the good Lord's grace, Who is making a jest of it. He travels wherever his brothers go and he leaves his home behind him, The need for smiles he seems to know; in the ranks of death you'll find him. When some are weary and sick and faint, and all with the dust are choking, He dances there with a spirit gay, And tints with gold what is drab and gray, And into the gloom of the night and day He scatters his mirthful joking.