THE STARS THEY SHINE SO HIGH

The stars they shine so high and the Earth she grows so green;
Many are the days my love and I have seen;
Cold are the nights that I must watch alone -
My love he was so young to be going.

*
"Captain, oh Father, you do me great wrong
To send him on a voyage when you know he is too young."
"Daughter, dear daughter, oh wait a little while
And marry him before he's going.

*
"He'll go to the Academy all for a year or two,
Before he in time must say farewell to you.
So give him your ring to wear upon his hand
To let the ladies know that he's married."

*
As I was a-walking by yonder spaceport wall,
Four and twenty young men were training for freefall;
There, my own true love he was the flower of them all;
But oh! he was so young to be going.

*
At the age of sixteen he was a married man;
At the age of seventeen the father of a son;
At the age of eighteen the sky had taken him -
Time had come that he was going.

*
I'll write my love a requiem and sing it to the sky;
Every word I write in it a tear will burn my eye ......
Once I had a truelove who travelled far to die -
I'll never let his son be going.

*
Now my love is gone forever and a day,
I'll gather up his ashes as they drift their earthward way;
I'll seal them in an hourglass to pass my life away -
Fare thee well, my own true love, for going.