| I walked from Ypres to Passchendale
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| In the first gray days of spring
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| Through flatland fields where life goes on
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| And carefree children sing
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| Round rows of ancient tombstones
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| Where a generation lies
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| And at last I understood
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| Why old men cry My mother’s father walked these fields
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| Some eighty years ago
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| He was half the age that I am now
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| No way that he could know
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| That his unborn grandchild someday
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| Would cross his path this way
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| And stand here
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| Where his fallen comrades lay He’d been dead a quarter century
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| By the time that I was born
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| The mustard gas which swept the trenches
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| Ripped apart his lungs
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| Another name and number
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| Among millions there who died
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| And at last I understood
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| Why old men cry I walked from Leith to Newtongrange
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| At the turning of the year
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| Through desolate communities
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| And faces gaunt with fear
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| Past bleak, abandoned pitheads
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| Where rich seams of coal still lie
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| And at last I understood
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| Why old men cry My father helped to win the coal
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| That lay neath Lothian’s soil
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| A life of bitter hardship
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| The reward for years of toil
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| But he tried to teach his children
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| There was more to life than this
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| Working all your life
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| To make some fat cat rich I walked from Garve to Ullapool
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| As the dawn light kissed the earth
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| And breathed the awesome beauty
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| Of this land that gave me birth
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| I looked into the future
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| Saw a people proud and free
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| As I looked along Loch Broom
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| Out to the sea |