One of my speech kids did this as a serious solo piece today and it was very timely.\u00c2? (He based it off of the Dropkick Murphys song though it’s actually a fairly well-known Irish folk song.)<\/p>\n
Well, how do you do, Private William McBride, Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly? And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind The sun’s shining down on these green fields of France; And I can’t help but wonder, no Willie McBride, One of my speech kids did this as a serious solo piece today and it was very timely.\u00c2? (He based it off of the Dropkick Murphys song though it’s actually a fairly well-known Irish folk song.) Well, how do you … Continue reading
\nDo you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
\nAnd rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
\nI’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
\nAnd I see by your gravestone you were only 19
\nWhen you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
\nWell, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
\nOr, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?<\/p>\n
\nDid the rifles fir o’er you as they lowered you down?
\nDid the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
\nDid the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?<\/p>\n
\nIn some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
\nAnd, though you died back in 1916,
\nTo that loyal heart are you forever 19?
\nOr are you a stranger without even a name,
\nForever enshrined behind some glass pane,
\nIn an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
\nAnd fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?<\/p>\n
\nThe warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
\nThe trenches have vanished long under the plow;
\nNo gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
\nBut here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land
\nThe countless white crosses in mute witness stand
\nTo man’s blind indifference to his fellow man.
\nAnd a whole generation who were butchered and damned.<\/p>\n
\nDo all those who lie here know why they died?
\nDid you really believe them when they told you “The Cause?”
\nDid you really believe that this war would end wars?
\nWell the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
\nThe killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
\nFor Willie McBride, it all happened again,
\nAnd again, and again, and again, and again.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"