Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/174

 The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,
 * The tree you would seek for in vain;

And where once the lords of the forest waved,
 * Are grass and the golden grain.

And don’t you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
 * With the master so cruel and grim,

And the shaded nook in the running 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 who were schoolmates then
 * There are only you and I.

There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt,
 * They have changed from the old to the new;

But I feel in the depths of my spirit the truth,
 * There never was change in you.

Twelvemonths twenty have passed, Ben Bolt,
 * Since first we were friends—yet I hail

Your presence a blessing, your friendship a truth,
 * Ben Bolt of the salt-sea gale.

Thomas Dunn English.