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.
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Green Fields Of France
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Angelic Upstarts |