"An Hour at the Old Play Ground" (1863)
Ballad
[Words from the N. Y. Mirror]
Music by
J[oseph]. P[hilbrick]. Webster [1819-1875]

Chicago, IL: H. M. HIGGINS, 117 Randolph St.
[Source: am4121@Mills]

1. I sat an hour to day, John,
Beside the old brook stream—
Where we were school boys in old time,
When manhood was a dream;
The brook is choked with fallen leaves,
The pond is dried away.
I scarce believe that you would know
The dear old place today.

The school house is no more, John,
Beneath our locust trees.
The wild rose by the window side—
No more waves in the breeze;
The scattered stones look desolate,
The sod they rested on,
Has been plough’d up by stranger hands
Since you and I were gone.

2. The chesnut tree is dead, John,
And what is sadder now—
The broken grapevine of our swing
Hangs on the wither’d bough;
I read our names upon the bark,
And found the pebbles rare—
Laid up beneath the hollow side,
As we had piled them there.

Beneath the grassgrown bank, John,
I look’d for our old spring—
That bubbled down the olden path,
Three paces from the spring;
The rushes grow upon the brink,
The pool is black and bare,
And not a foot this many a day,
It seems has trodden there.

3. I took the old blind road, John,
That wander’d up the hill.
’Tis darker than it used to be,
And seems so lone and still;
The birds sing yet upon the boughs—
Where once the sweet grapes hung,
But not a voice of human kind,
Where all our voices rung.

I sat me on the fence, John,
That lies as in old time,
The same half panel in the path
We used so oft to climb;
And thought how o’er the bars of life,
Our playmates had passed on,
And left me counting on the spot
The faces that are gone.