Do you mind if I sit here dawn by your graveside,

And rest for a while heath the warm summer sun,

I've been worldng all day and I'm nearly done.

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,

When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen,

I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,

Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene.

CHORUS:

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the life 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 Floulrs of the Forest.

And did you leave awife 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 pane, In an old photograph, torn and 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, it makes the red poppies dance. And look how the sun shines from under the clouds There's no gas, no barbed wire, 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.