Letras
How d'you do Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And I rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day now and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone that you were only nineteen
When you joined the dead heroes of 1915
Well 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 you as they lowered you down
Did the bugle sing the last posting 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
And though you died back in 1915
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you some stranger without even a name
Trapped now forever behind a glass frame
In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a bound leather frame
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down
Did the bugle sing the last posting chorus
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest
The sun's shining now on these green fields of France
A warm breeze blows gently and the red poppies dance
Trenches have vanished under the plough
There's no gas, there's no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it is still no-man's-land
Where countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that was butchered and damned
While they beat the drum slowly and they played the fife lowly
And the rifles fired o'er you as they lowered you down
And the bugle sang the last posting chorus
And the pipes played The Flowers of the Forest
And I can't help but wonder now Willie McBride
Do all those who lie here even know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
Did you really believe that your war would end wars
For the suffering and the sorrow and the glory and the shame
The killing and the dying, it was all done in vain
For Willie McBride it's all happened again
And again and again and again and again
And they beat the drum slowly and they play the fife lowly
And the rifles fire o'er you as they lower you down
Then the bugle sing the last posting chorus
And the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest