Oh how do you do, young William MacBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for awhile ‘neath the warm summer sun
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or young Willie MacBride, was it slow and obscene?

Chorus
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the pipes lowly
Did they sound the death 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 that faithful heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
In that faithful heart, are you forever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed now forever, behind a glass pane
In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Chorus

The sun, how it shines on the green fields of France
Beneath the warm summer wind, it makes the red poppies dance
And see how the sun shines from under the clouds
There’s no gas, nor 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.

Chorus

Now Willie MacBride, I can’t help wonder why
Do those that lie here know why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the call
Did they really believe that this war would end war?

For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying, it was all done in vain
For young Willie MacBride, it all happened again
And again and again and again and again.

Chorus