Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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Listen on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/0Gt38YT4AQDg4xRLFH5xuD?si=BNV8P5WQTlqoVoj8rlwA6A
Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/album/historical-songs-on-piano-the-american-civil-war/1810528848

Good day! This is a piano instrumental of the American Civil War song "Somebody's Darling."

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"Somebody's Darling" is considered by some to be an antiwar song. The lyrics were originally a poem written by Marie Ravenal de LaCoste, the daughter of French immigrants. After her fiance was killed in combat, she began visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals. In 1864, she wrote her poem, "Somebody's Darling," and brought it to Hermann L Schreiner of the J. C. Schreiner & Son music firm, which set music to her text. The song was published in 1864 and saw popularity in both the North and the South.


Lyrics:
Into the ward of the clean white-washed halls,
Where the dead slept and the dying lay;
Wounded by bayonets, sabres and balls,
Somebody's darling was borne one day.
Somebody's darling so young and so brave,
Wearing still on his sweet yet pale face
Soon to be hid in the dust of the grave,
The lingering light of his boyhood's grace.

Somebody's darling, somebody's pride,
Who'll tell his Mother where her boy died?

Matted and damp are his tresses of gold,
Kissing the snow of that fair young brow;
Pale are the lips of most delicate mould,
Somebody's darling is dying now.
Back from his beautiful purple-veined brow,
Brush off the wandering waves of gold;
Cross his white hands on his broad bosom now,
Somebody's darling is still and cold.

Somebody's darling, somebody's pride,
Who'll tell his Mother where her boy died?

Give him a kiss, but for somebody's sake,
Murmur a prayer for him, soft and low,
One little curl from his golden mates take,
Somebody's they were once, you know,
Somebody's warm hand has oft rested there,
Was it a Mother's so soft and white?
Or have the lips of a sister, so fair,
Ever been bathed in their waves of light?

Somebody's darling, somebody's pride,
Who'll tell his Mother where her boy died?


Somebody's watching and waiting for him,
Yearning to hold him again to her breast;
Yet there he lies with his blue eyes so dim,
And purple, child-like lips half apart.
Tenderly bury the fair, unknown dead,
Pausing to drop on this grave a tear;
Carve on the wooden slab over his head,
"Somebody's darling is slumbering here."



The music in this video was made using Logic Pro.