"Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"

— by Pete Seeger

Seeger carried on as best he could, singing for young people at liberal colleges like Oberlin and Reed. En route to one of these concerts, Seeger had the inspiration for "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" On the plane, he pulled out his pocket-size song notebook: "Leafing through it, I came across three lines I'd written down, oh, at least a year or two before: 'Where are the flowers, the girls have plucked them. Where are the girls, they've all taken husbands. Where are the men, they're all in the army.' "

He'd read this in a novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don, the three lines came from a Ukrainian folk song. For a year he had searched around for the original song, then given up, jotting down this fragment in hopes of using it some day. This time he glanced at the words, and "things just slipped into place."

For four or five years, Pete had also carried a musical phrase in his head, like an old man saving string: "long time passing." He had been struck by its melodic beauty: the four vowel sounds are sequential, opening up the mouth as they are sung. "All I knew was that those were three words I wanted to use in a song; I wasn't quite sure how, where, or when. Suddenly it fit with this: 'Where have all the flowers gone — long time passing.' And, five minutes later, I had 'Long time ago.' Then without realizing it, I took a tune, a lumberjack version of 'Drill Ye Tarriers Drill;' it was as unconscious as Woody using 'Goodnight Irene' as the tune for 'Roll On Columbia.' "

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them, every one
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands, every one
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the husbands gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers, every one
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, every one
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, every one
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them, every one
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?