I wrote the line notes with Faith Petric when we released the Faith's Favorites CD. This is the verse Faith wrote:

Wind's comin' down the gulch,
Night birds cry alarm,
Wish I'd stayed in Abilene,
Nice and dry and warm.

Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman wrote the others.

In _American Songbag_, Sandburg observed the similarities between this classic cowboy love song and the 16th century English poem:

Oh, Western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.