Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts
Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts
(words and music by Norman G. Walker - 2007 © SOCAN)
Stephen Foster’s “last words” written on this paper scrap and found in his pocket when he died on January 13, 1864.
Let us pause in life’s endeavours, and the troubles of the day
To consider those before us, and the path they cleared away
For without their joys and sorrows, we’d not be here today
Those dear friends and gentle hearts of yesterday.
There were many came from far away, from troubled foreign shores
Starvation, famine, poverty, or cruel bloody wars
With a vision of a future, they toiled their lives away
Those dear friends and gentle hearts of yesterday.
For our mothers’ lives of caring, played the most important parts
We forever will be grateful and will hold them in our hearts
All those ones who’ve gone to glory, still a part of them will stay
Those dear friends and gentle hearts of yesterday.
To our fathers’ strength and courage, in the face of the unknown
In reverent thankful wonderment, for the legacy we own
There’s no measure for their sacrifice, or price they had to pay
Those dear friends and gentle hearts of yesterday.
There were kinfolk, friends and neighbours, that a debt to them we owe
For the sharing and the caring, and the kindness that they showed
For the meaning of community, in fond remembrance say
Those dear friends and gentle hearts of yesterday.
So gather friends and families, from near and far away
To sing and tell the stories of the ones not here today
For today we are a circle, though tomorrow they may say
Those dear friends and gentle hearts of yesterday.
For today we are a circle, and of us one day they’ll say
Those dear friends and gentle hearts of yesterday.
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