Faith, ’twas little news they brought me; every story, every song
That I’ve heard since you enlisted seemed to bear the one refrain,
Till the whole world used to tell me that you’d never come again.
They’ve been cruel times, alannah, since you left us for the fight,
Potterin’ dazed-like all the daytime, thinkin’, thinkin’ through the night;
Yerra, what’s the use complainin’, when the world is all amiss,
When the hopin’ and the strivin’ ever come to dust like this.
’Twas the green months when you left me; now the brown, brown months have come,
Stand the ripe crops in the paddocks, but the harvesters are dumb.
There’ll be flowers again in plenty, and a carpet o’er the plain—