| He knew it by heart and so did I
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| He said as we rode down the road
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| Without letting go of the boat he held
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| That hopped and croaked, like a toad
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| We didn’t progress all that fast
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| For his back was glued to a wall
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| But he spoke of the life of one Joe Breem
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| Who met his death in the fall…
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| One Joe Breem or Breen, the son of a lighthouse keeper, a strong,
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| muscular lad of 15, who swam for miles in the night, a knife between his teeth,
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| after a shark, out of sheer heroism
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| We stopped and I held the goat by the horn
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| He opened his mouth as to speak
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| But all that I heard was a kind of rattle
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| He must have been incredibly weak
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| His silence seemed most natural to me
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| As we stood and then admired the view
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| Of the first bats that flew out of the night
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| Though there returned but a few |