Spaceman's Shanty

No comet nor flare nor skrend may deter us Till Proxima Centauri in our sights is found And once we have had all of our pay conferred us We'll claim our extra-terrarial ground So facing the dark we unfurl solar sails Start hurling the fury of stars back their way The nebulae swirling like fine Martian ale The souls of lost sailors perturbed in our wake Away, boys, away, drive surely on the fade We'll set the engines going and we'll plow our way through space One day, boys, one day, we'll prime our final core Eventually we'll take her into the final port There's time to be had, and there's time to be twisted We freely acknowledge causality's breaks We'll ferry the cargo before it existed And we'll pay no mind to the time that light takes Away, boys, away, drive surely on the fade We'll set the engines going and we'll plow our way through space One day, boys, one day, we'll prime our final core Eventually we'll take her into the final port The empires and kingdoms, and unions and fifes Without our hard labor they'd all be for naught The presidents and rulers all live their high lifes They'll never know the toils and works that we've wrought They say the old quartermaster went mad Hyperspace sirens caught him in their snare He threw himself out of the airlock, poor lad Makes three score and seven who've met their end there Away, boys, away, and never cease to dream We'll coast through the stars on temporal jetstreams One day boys, one day we'll ferry the final fare And we'll rest our last days in alien air For our children at long last we'll finally be there