A hauntingly beautiful Irish melody, 1893.
words by Thomas Moore
music: anonymous
arranged by Alfred Scott Gatty
Thomas Moore was writing in the early 1800s. This is a rearrangement and later publication.
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
Lyrics
- 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 ’twas like a sweet dream
To sit in the roses and hear the bird’s song
That bower and its music I 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 withered that hung o’er the wave
But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone
And the dew was distilled from their flowers that gave
All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone
Thus memory draws from delight e’er it dies
An essence that breathes of it many a year
Thus bright to my soul, as ’twas then to my eyes
Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer
Sung here by Fred Feild: