How can I be happy and gay?

How can I be happy and gay?

How can I wear a ribbon and a bunch of flowers?

Now that the lovely boy whom I love so much

Gone far away over the mountains!

It isn't the icy winter wind

It isn't the snow and the storm and the sleet

But I'm getting tears in my eyes every time

I think of him who's gone away.

The long winter is over

Spring makes the birches bright and beautiful

The month of May colours and blooms and laughs

Then he returns who was far away.