1914 - The Green Fields of France lyrics

[1914 - The Green Fields of France lyrics]

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit
Here down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all
Day and I'm nearly done
I see by your gravestone you
Were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916
I hope you died well and
I hope you died clean
Or young Willie McBride
Was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drum slowly
Did they play the life lowly?
Did they sound the dеath march
As they lowered you down?
Did thе band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Did you leave a wife or sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is
Your memory enshrined?
Although you died back in 1916
In that faithful heart are
You forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed in forever behind the glass frame
In an old photograph, torn
Battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun now it shines on
The green fields of France
There's a warm summer breeze that
Makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines
From under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire
There's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's
Still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses stand
Mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to
His fellow man to a whole generation that
Were butchered and damned

Ah young Willie McBride
I can't help wonder why
Do those that lie here know why did they die?
And did they believe when
The answered the cause
Did they really believe that this
War would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory
The pain
The killing and dying, were all done in vain
For young Willie McBride
It all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

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