To Minnie

 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?" 

Ah, far enough, my dear, 
Far, far enough from here-- 
Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf 
Too high for me to reach myself.
 
Reach down a hand, my dear, and take 
These rhymes for old acquaintance' sake! 
Yet you have farther gone! 
"Can I get there by candlelight?" 
So goes the old refrain.
 
I do not know--perchance you might-- 
But only, children, hear it right, 
Ah, never to return again! 
The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt, 
Shall break on hill and plain, 
And put all stars and candles out 
Ere we be young again.
 

To you in distant India, these 
I send across the seas, 
Nor count it far across.
 
For which of us forget 
The Indian cabinets, 
The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross, 
The pied and painted birds and beans, 
The junks and bangles, beads and screens, 
The gods and sacred bells, 
And the load-humming, twisted shells! 
The level of the parlour floor 
Was honest, homely, Scottish shore; 
But when we climbed upon a chair, 
Behold the gorgeous East was there! 
Be this a fable; and behold 
Me in the parlour as of old, 
And Minnie just above me set 
In the quaint Indian cabinet!

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