Music by James Butterfield, Lyrics by George Washington Johnson
Johnson was a Canadian school teacher who fell in love with his pupil, Margaret Clark. (The more things change the more they remain the same.) She contracted TB, but still they went ahead and married in 1864. Tragically she died a year later. George's pal, J.C. Butterfield, put this poem to his friend's late wife to music, and the rest is history. George died in 1917.
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/A7AXR27N1HY/maxresdefault.jpg)