This tune is a medieval French carol, Noël Nouvelet, which is a staple of the King's College Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It's also known in English, and somehow less impressive, as Sing We Now of Christmas.
But the words here, with their echoes of John Barleycorn, come from the 20th century hymn book. They were written by John Macleod Campbell Crum and published in 1928.
As it's a hymn, the parallels between the coming of spring and the Resurrection are made explicit. Others in this period found consolation in a wider sense that the lost of the Western Front would somehow be reborn in nature.
This is from John Masefield's 1917 account of the Somme Offensive, The Old Front Line:
All wars end; even this war will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be forgotten. When the trenches are filled in, and the plough has gone over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war.
One summer with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began, will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps. …
In a few years’ time, when this war is a romance in memory, the soldier looking for his battlefield will find his marks gone. Centre Way, Peel Trench, Munster Alley, and these other paths to glory will be deep under the corn, and gleaners will sing at Dead Mule Corner.
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