Bendemeer's Stream - Patricia Kelly

There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream

And the nightingale sings round it all the day long

In the time of my childhood it was like a sweet dream

To sit in the roses and hear the bird’s song

That bower and its music I’ll never forget

But oft when alone in the bloom of the year

I think is the nightingale singing there yet

Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer

No the roses soon wither’d that hung o’er the wave

But some blossoms were gather’d while freshly they shone

And the dew was distill’d from their flowers they gave

All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone

Thus memory draws from delight ere it dies

An essence that breathes of it many a year

Thus bright to my soul as it was then to my eyes

Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer

Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer