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Out from the Golden Gate
One by one they go.
Each to her fortune or her fate,
What waits them who can know?
Who can tell if they come
Again o'er the harbor bar,
Ploughing their way through the dashing foam
In the light of sun or star?
Who knows but that stately form
In the distant blue, a speck,
May lie ere the light of another morn
In the whelming floods, a wreck?
Lost! Lost! in the deep
To the maddened waves a prey,
Lost! Lost! where the caverns sleep
In fathomless mystery;
Or lured by the siren's song
On merciless rocks to dash,
To sink while the midnight shadows throng
And severing timbers crash.

In through the Golden Gate
In the twilight's deepening hush,
Out through the Golden Gate
In the morning's rosy flush;
With the port of rest in view,
O'er the perilous waves to ride,
Sail the proud ships of our country true
With the flag of our nation's pride,
While close in their pathless way
The gulls from their rude cliff-nests
Flap their wings in the driven spray
And bathe in the foam their breasts;
And the dark blue waves I love,
In their aimless frolic reach

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