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