A touching ballad with loads of nostalgia, 1848.
words by Thomas Dunn English
music by Nelson F. Kneass
Scarlett sings snatches of “Ben Bolt” most charmingly in the movie Gone With the Wind. It’s actually about sad changes with the passage of time, and the many things that are lost.
The sheet music:
Accompaniment track:
Lyrics
- Oh! don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt
Sweet Alice, with hair so brown
She wept with delight when you gave her a smile
And trembled with fear at your frown
In the old church yard, in the valley, Ben Bolt
In a corner obscure and alone
They have fitted a slab of granite so gray
And sweet Alice lies under the stone - Oh! don’t you remember the wood, Ben Bolt
Near the green sunny slope of the hill
Where oft we have sung ’neath its wide spreading shade
And kept time to the click of the mill
The mill has gone to decay, Ben Bolt
And a quiet now reigns all around
See the old rustic porch with its roses so sweet
Lies scattered and fallen to the ground - Oh! don’t you remember the school, Ben Bolt
And the master so kind and so true
And the little nook by the clear running brook
Where we gathered the flow’rs as they grew
On the Master’s grave grows the grass, Ben Bolt
And the running little brook is now dry
And of all the friends who were school mates then
There remains Ben, but you and I
Sung here by Fred Feild: