The red room with the giant bed Where none but elders laid their head; The little room where you and I Did for awhile together lie And, simple suitor, I your hand In decent marriage did demand; The great day nursery, best of all, With pictures pasted on the wall And leaves upon the blind A pleasant room wherein to wake And hear the leafy garden shake And rustle in the wind-- And pleasant there to lie in bed And see the pictures overhead-- The wars about Sebastopol, The grinning guns along the wall, The daring escalade, The plunging ships, the bleating sheep, The happy children ankle-deep And laughing as they wade; All these are vanished clean away, And the old manse is changed to-day; It wears an altered face And shields a stranger race. The river, on from mill to mill, Flows past our childhood's garden still; But ah! we children never more Shall watch it from the water-door. Below the yew--it still is there-- Our phantom voices haunt the air As we were still at play, And I can hear them call and say: "_How far is it to Babylon?_"