• I smile and laugh, "It's been a while.
    It was when I was just a child.
    Oh yes, a young lad was I,
    upon that fair ground soft and mild."

    "The times I had! to run and play,
    out until the night was day.
    I resolved to never cry,
    and as a child, to always stay."

    "But oaths were ended at thirteen.
    Fate threw a twist I hadn't seen.
    On summer's day, father died,
    and I grew up that summer's eve."

    "Four years after, we first met when
    we took a walk through nature's den.
    As soon as I met your eyes,
    I knew you as my bride, right then."

    "Not long after school suspended,
    we had a fam'ly that we tended.
    Baby Anne who like to cry,
    nested in a cradle mended."

    "A job, I had, to care for us
    and all went well without a fuss
    'til that man of suit came by
    and sent me on an army bus."

    "How sorely did I miss your smile
    while gone away a thousand mile.
    Breathing fire fell from the sky.
    Each fate of day turned by the dial."

    "Yet from the wars I had returned,
    escaping lands that hate had burned.
    To return, I donned a tie,
    but what I saw! My stomach churned!"

    "Sick in bed you lay that night.
    By your side our child sat if fright.
    I knew not if I could buy
    the medicine you needed right."

    "It took some time, and toil, and tears
    to get you well and stay my fears.
    Then did time begin to fly,
    and now time finds us sitting here."

    "Our birds have flown from our sweet nest,
    out to learn and live their best.
    I had hoped one day they'd try
    to visit us and take a rest."

    "Now, both our heads have hair of gray,
    no longer working through the day.
    Retired to our house and drive,
    'til time is done, there we will stay."

    "And now, dear Jessica, my wife,
    it is with you I end my life.
    Ready am I now to die
    by the kind old fires and glinting knife."

    "It's not in sadness I depart,
    but with a heavy laden heart.
    I will join you in the sky.
    It isn't long we'll be apart."

    "Yet you ask if I have lived
    enough that I would want to give
    my life and pay the cost to buy
    eternal life with you to live."

    "I'll tell you my sweet darling love,
    my perfect, snow white, angel dove:
    I could not stand to be alive.
    I'd have to join you up above."

    And so, a blade is lifted strong
    as the fires burn right along.
    As her life fades from her eyes,
    a blade descends as fires die.

    Two hands that are now growing cold
    grasp the others and words are told.
    "I love you and I always will."
    And now these hands are laying still.