Letras
Well how d'you do Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been travelling all day and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious calling in 1915
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 fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes play the Fleurs of the Forest?
Or did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In somebody's heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in 1915
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name?
Enshrined forever behind a glass pane
In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a bound leather frame
Ah, the sun's shining now on those green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
And the trenches have vanished under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in the 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
To a whole generation who were butchered and damned
And I can't help but wonder now, William 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?
For the suffering, the sorrow and the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain
For Willie McBride it's all happened again
And again and again and again and again
Did they beat the drum slowly? Did they play the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing the last post and chorus?