Verse 1: An aged couple seated by the firelight's cheerful glow,
Reviewed their happy courtship of the distant long ago.
The scene reverts to sadness as that scroll of time unrolled,
A letter then to write they plan, this couple gray and old.
Far o'er the sea their only boy had gone to join the fray,
Their lonely watch they kept for him as years rolled on their way.
At last they sent this message to that distant foreign land,
"We miss you dear, we're old and poor," and thus the letter ran:

Chorus: Our hair is like the snow, Our cheeks have lost their glow,
Our eyes no longer sparkle like the dew.
At life's twilight, old and gray, we have waited day by day,
Will your children then desert you, when your hair is like the snow.

Verse 2: The captain of the regiment, a soldier young and fair,
Beloved by comrades, feared by foes, received the missive there;
He read each line, then turned away to hide the tears that fell,
What battles fought within that heart no tongue can ever tell.
"I'll go!" he said, "To Mother dear, and Father kind and true,
I'll leave these crimson battle fields for lands where skies are blue."
He hurried home across the foam, alas! but all in vain,
Beneath the weeping willows there he read these lines again:

Chorus: Our hair is like the snow, Our cheeks have lost their glow,
Our eyes no longer sparkle like the dew.
At life's twilight, old and gray, we have waited day by day,
Will your children then desert you, when your hair is like the snow.