Wreck Of Edmund Fitzgerald
by Gordon Lightfoot
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Th | e legend lives on from the | chippewa on down of the | Big lake they | called "Gitche | Gumee" |
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The lake, it is said, never g | ives up her dead |
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When the | skies of No | vember turn | gloomy. |
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With a load of iron ore twenty-six | thousand tons more |
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Than the | Edmund Fitz | gerald weighed | empty. |
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That good ship and true was a | bone to be chewed |
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When the | "Gales of No | vember" came | early. |
The ship was the pride of the American side coming back from some mill in |
Wisconsin, as the big freighters go it was bigger than most, with a crew and |
good captain well seasoned, concluding some terms with a couple of steel |
firms, when they left fully loaded for Cleveland, and later that night when |
the ships bell rang, could it be the north wind they'd been feeling. |
The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound, and a wave broke over the |
railing, and every man knew as the captain did too, twas the witch of |
November come stealing, the dawn came late and breakfast had to wait, when |
the gales of November came slashing, when the afternoon came it was freezing |
rain, in the face of a hurricane west wind. |
When suppertime came the old cook came on deck, saying fellas its too rough |
to feed you, at seven p.m. a main hatch way caved in, he said fellas its |
been good to know you. the captain wired in, he had water coming in, and the |
good ship and crew were in peril, and later that night when his lights went |
of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. |
Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes |
to hours, the searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay, if they'd |
put fifteen more miles behind her, they might have split up, or they might |
have capsized, they may have broke deep and took water, all that remains is |
the faces and names of the wives and the sons and the daughters. |
Lake Huron rolls, Superior swings, in the rooms of her ice water mansions, |
old Michigan steams like a young mans dreams, the islands and bays are for |
sportsmen, and farther below Lake Ontario takes in what Lake Erie can send |
her, and the iron boats go as the mariners all know, with the gales of |
November remembered. |
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed, in the Maritime Sailors |
Cathedral, the church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times, for each |
man on the Edmund Fitzgerald, The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down, |
of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee, the lake it is said never gives up |
its dead when the gales of November come early. |