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Well, how do you do, Private William McBride, |
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Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside? |
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And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun, |
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I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done. |
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And I see by your gravestone you were only 19 |
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When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916, |
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Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean |
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Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene? |
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Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly? |
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Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down? |
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Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus? |
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Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest? |
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And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind |
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In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined? |
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And, though you died back in 1916, |
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To that loyal heart are you forever 19? |
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Or are you a stranger without even a name, |
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Forever enshrined behind some glass pane, |
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In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained, |
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And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame? |
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The sun's shining down on these green fields of France; |
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The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance. |
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The trenches have vanished long under the plow; |
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No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now. |
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But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land |
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The countless white crosses in mute witness stand |
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To man's blind indifference to his fellow man. |
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And a whole generation who were butchered and damned. |
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And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride, |
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Do all those who lie here know why they died? |
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Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?" |
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Did you really believe that this war would end wars? |
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Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame |
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The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain, |
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For Willie McBride, it all happened again, |
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And again, and again, and again, and again. |
