1
We lease twenty acres and one Ginny mule
From the Alabama trust
For half of the cotton and a third of the corn
We get a handful of dust
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
I had a daughter called her Annabelle
She's the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I never had
Didn't want to ever hear her cry
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
When I'm dead and buried I'll take a hard life of tears
From every day I've ever known
Anna's in the churchyard she got no life at all
She's only got these words on a stone
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
From the Alabama trust
For half of the cotton and a third of the corn
We get a handful of dust
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
I had a daughter called her Annabelle
She's the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I never had
Didn't want to ever hear her cry
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
When I'm dead and buried I'll take a hard life of tears
From every day I've ever known
Anna's in the churchyard she got no life at all
She's only got these words on a stone
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
Lyrics submitted by smallwonderrobot
Annabelle Lyrics as written by Gillian Howard Welch
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Life is full of suffering, especially for a sharecropper who is the voice we hear in this song. Bad things happen. Children die. The crop fails. Life is hard.
The only consolation is to have faith in the afterlife. Why is life so full of suffering? His answer is that he doesn't know. Maybe it's just the way the world is. The world isn't here to please us. It's all a mystery.
When we've all gone to Jesus, then he'll tell us what it all means. There be an answer in the sweet bye-and-bye.