This song was sung by soldiers on both sides during the CIvil War as they thought of their wives and girl friends back home. One Confederate officer blamed the South's defeat on the song. He thought that hearing the tender ballad made the soldiers so homesick that they lost their effectiveness in battle.
The lyrics were penned by a young Zanesville, Ohio minister in 1856, Rev. H.D. Webster. He fell for a Miss Blockson of his congregation. She lived with her sister who did not approve her becoming involved with a poor young minister. They had to call off their relationship. Brokenhearted he resigned his church and left Ohio. He then wrote a poem about his lost love.
He later met Joseph P. Webster who had previously written the music to the hymn "In the Sweet By and By." They changed the name in the poem to Lorena to get three syllables and Joseph wrote the beautiful tune we know by that name. The song was published in 1858 by Higgins Brothers of Chicago.
Those familiar with the tune will recognize it in a number of movies, such as The Horse Soldiers and The Searchers. Ken Burns used it in 1990 in his lengthy and excellent documentary on the Civil War. Though some of the stanzas may seem mournful or "dated", it is truly a genuine "slice of Americana."
The first stanza is quoted here:
The years creep slowly by Lorena,
The snow is on the grass again.
The sun's low down the sky Lorena,
The frost gleams where the flowers have been.
But the heart throbs on as warmly now
As when the summer days were nigh;
Oh, the sun can never dip so low
A-down affection's cloudless sky.
If you are not familiar with the tune, by all means, look it up. (Some renditions are better than others.)
Sent from my iPad
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