Well how do you do, young Willie McBride, do you
Mind if I sit here down by your graveside. And rest for a
While ´neath the warm summer sun. I´ve been working all day and
I´m nearly done. I see by your gravestone you were
Only nineteen when you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.
I hope you died well 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 they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.
And did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the ´Flowers of the forest´.
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And fade to yellow in a brown leather frame.
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There´s a warm summer breeze. it 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.
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