Comes a young Captain bearing a gold handkerchief: he weeps with fine, fine tears.
“O Captain, my Captain, weep not!
Send word to my friends to come and build me a house.”
With rifles shining like silver his comrades came.
They wept over his head with fine tears.
“Weep not; O ye, my dear friends; tell my father and mother to hasten here from the country to bury me.”
“Where, O my son, shall we dig thy grave?”
“Nay, neither of you shall bury me; the young soldiers only shall bear me there.”
So they bore him, leading his horse before him; behind the coffin his mother walked, weeping. Even more wept his sweetheart. The tears of his mother would not make him rise from the dead; but his sweetheart was crying and wringing her hands.
For never before had a soldier been her lover: