Lorelei - Noël Coward

Lorelei, Lorelei

Call to sailors drifting by

Who-o-o-o, who-o-o, come hither

While they’re sailing a voice is wailing a beckoning tune

No use praying they’ll all be paying a reckoning soon under the moon

Lorelei, Lorelei

Still the voices fade and die

Smiling with glee, into the sea they slither

Down in the depths profound

Where passionate joys are drowned

There lie the lovers wooed by the Loreli

All that is past, and now at last everything’s altered and changed-about

Progress goes on, glamour has gone from where the schooners once ranged-about

Speed and power, hour by hour liners tower high

Onward churning, never turning for a yearning cry

Coal dust to grime

No one has time

For any simple romance at all

Beckoned and coo

Till they are blue

Mermaids have got no damned chance at all

Lorelei, Lorelei, sit around and weep and cry

Days are too long, everything’s wrong completely

All the sirens in these environs are sorry they spoke

Coaling steamers are belching streamers of horrible smoke making them choke

Lorelei, Lorelei sadly sigh and wonder why

Every new ship gives them the slip so easily

What could be more obscene

Than vamping a sad marine

It is a languid let alone Lorelei