Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Tonight’s song is very short and very simple: a man remembers the last time he saw the woman he loved, crying in the rain as they said goodbye. He knew they would never meet again.

That’s so sad.

Sad, but full of hope at the end: someday, he says, they will meet again. Listen to how simply Willie Nelson sings it.

Short songs are good songs.

Listen once. What does he remember? What did he know? What does he hope?

Then answer Section A.

I knew we would never meet again. She said she would write. I thought it was going to rain.

When we talk about the future from a point in the past: would (the past of will) or was / were going to. I knew he would come. It is also how reported speech works: “I’ll write” → She said she would write.

We kissed goodbye and parted. I had never felt so sad before.

Past simple for the events in order; past perfect for something before that moment: I had never felt… = up to that time.

Someday we’ll meet again. One day it will stop raining.

someday / one day + will for a hope about the distant future. Careful: someday (one word) = at an unknown time in the future; some day (two words) also exists: Let’s meet some day next week.

When Jacob was told that his son Joseph was dead, he refused to be comforted. He thought he would never see him again. Twenty-two years later, he held him in his arms in Egypt and said: now I can die, because I have seen your face.

And Odysseus’s old dog Argos waited twenty years. When his master came home in rags, nobody knew him, except Argos, who wagged his tail and died happy.