"Ben Bolt" (1850)
A favorite
SONG
The Words by
T. Dunn English Esq.
The Music Composed
& Respectfully Dedicated to
Peter Lawson
by
R. Sinclair.

New York, NY: Firth, Pond & Co., 1 Franklin Square
New Orleans, LA: W. T. Mayo
Plate No. 834
[Source: 127/017@Levy]

1. O don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt, 
Sweet Alice, with hair so brown, 
Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, 
And trembled with fear at you frown; 
In the cold churchyard, of the valley, Ben Bolt, 
In a corner obscure and alone, 
They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray, 
And Alice lies under the stone.

2. Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt, 
Which stood at the foot of the hill, 
Together we’ve lain in the noon day shade, 
And listen’d to Appleton’s mill. 
The millwheel has fallen to places, Ben Bolt, 
The rafters have tumbled in, 
And a quiet which crawls round the walls as you gaze, 
Was follow’d the olden din.

3. Do you mind the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt,
At the edge of the pathless wood,
And the buttonball tree with its motley limbs,
Which nigh by the doorstep stood?
The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,
The tree you would seek in vain;
And where once the lords of the forest wav’d,
Grow grass and the golden grain.

4. And don’t you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
With the master so cruel and grim,
And the shaded monk in the runing brook,
Where the children went to swim?
Grass grows on the master’s grave, Ben Bolt,
The spring of the brook is dry,
And of all the boys that were schoolmates then
There are only you and I.

5. There’s a change in the things that I lov’d, Ben Bolt,
They have chang’d from the old to the new;
But I feel in the core of my spirit the truth,
That there never was change in you;
Twelve months twenty have pass’d, Ben Bolt,
Since first we were friends, yet I hail
Thy presence a blessing, they friendship a truth, 
Ben Bolt, of the salt-sea gale.