A ballad with lovely romantic images, 1916.
words by Frederick Weatherly
music by Haydn Wood
Picardy is a region in Northern France. This song was sung by British soldiers on the front in World War I. Subjects: courtship, love, nostalgia, time, roses, flowers, separation.
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
Lyrics
- She is watching by the poplars
Colinette with the sea-blue eyes
She is watching and longing and waiting
Where the long white roadway lies
And a song stirs in the silence
As the wind in the boughs above
She listens and starts and trembles
‘Tis the first little song of love
Chorus
“Roses are shining in Picardy
In the hush of the silver dew
Roses are flowering in Picardy
But there’s never a rose like you
And the roses will die with the summertime
And our roads may be far apart
But there’s one rose that dies not in Picardy
‘Tis the rose that I keep in my heart”
- And the years fly on forever
Till the shadows veil their skies
But he loves to hold her little hands
And look in her sea-blue eyes
And she sees the road by the poplars
Where they met in the bygone years
For the first little song of the roses
Is the last little song she hears
Sung here by Fred Feild: