[Verse 1]
Good Doctor Brown
He fell in love
With a girl with sleeves
Of such rosy silk
But her dark eyes roved away
Away, away
Like the soaring gulls
On the wine-dark sea
[Verse 2]
One night he begged
She'd be his bride
But she said "No
It cannot be
Just like the gulls
With their hungry cries
I love you less
The wine-dark tide
[Verse 3]
How he did brood
On such cruel words
And those rosy sleeves
Of shining silk
He took a rock
And threw it high
And knocked a gull
From the wine-dark sky
[Verse 4]
In twilight dusk
In a black eel ditch
The doctor burned
Wormwood and pitch
And with a fist
Of graveyard dirt
He begged the night
For that wine-dark heart
[Verse 5]
There she came
With those rosy sleeves
To touch his lips
With such a wine-dark kiss
His black top hat
To the breeze it went
And his flapping arms
Grew feathered thick
His face is stretched
To a sharpened beak
And how he screeched
To feel the wine-dark wind
But though he flapped
And fought to fly
Those rosy sleeves
Held them oh so tight