Language   

A Silent Night Christmas 1915

Jerry Lynch
Language: English




Nineteen-fifteen on Christmas day,
On the Western Front, the guns all died away,
And lying in the mud on bags of sand,
We heard a German sing from no man's land.
He had a tenor voice so pure and true.
The words were strange but every note we knew.
Soaring o'er the living, dead and damned,
The German sang of peace from no man's land.

Oh silent night, no cannons roar.
A king is born of peace forevermore.
All's calm, all's bright,
All brothers hand in hand,
In nineteen-and-fifteen in no man's land.

They left their trenches and we left ours.
Beneath tin hats, the smiles bloomed like wild flowers.
With photos, cigarettes and tots of wine,
We built a soldier's truce on the front line.
Their singer was a lad of twenty-one.
We begged another song before the dawn
And sitting in the mud and blood and fear,
He sang again the song all longed to hear.

Oh silent night, no cannons roar.
A king is born of peace forevermore.
All's calm, all's bright,
All brothers hand in hand,
Midst gas and rusty wire in no man's land.

And in the morning, all the guns boomed in the rain,
And we killed them and they killed us again,
With bayonet, bomb, bullet, gas and flame,
And neither we nor they at all to blame.
There was heavy fighting right throughout the day.
For one night's peace we bloodily did pay.
At night they charged, we fought them hand to hand,
And I killed the boy that sang in no man's land.

Oh silent night, no cannons roar.
A king is born of peace forevermore.
All's calm, all's bright,
All brothers hand in hand,
And that young soldier sings,
And the sound of peace still rings,
Though the captains and all the kings build no man's land.

Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright,
Round yon virgin, mother and child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.



Main Page

Please report any error in lyrics or commentaries to antiwarsongs@gmail.com

Note for non-Italian users: Sorry, though the interface of this website is translated into English, most commentaries and biographies are in Italian and/or in other languages like French, German, Spanish, Russian etc.




hosted by inventati.org