Edgar Albert Guest

The Toy-Strewn Home

Give me the house where the toys are strewn,
  Where the dolls are asleep in the chairs,
Where the building blocks and the toy balloon
  And the soldiers guard the stairs.
Let me step in a house where the tiny cart
  With the horses rules the floor,
And rest comes into my weary heart,
  For I am at home once more.

Give me the house with the toys about,
  With the battered old train of cars,
The box of paints and the books left out,
  And the ship with her broken spars.
Let me step in a house at the close of day
  That is littered with children's toys,
And dwell once more in the haunts of play,
  With the echoes of by-gone noise.

Give me the house where the toys are seen,
  The house where the children romp,
And I'll happier be than man has been
  'Neath the gilded dome of pomp.
Let me see the litter of bright-eyed play
  Strewn over the parlor floor,
And the joys I knew in a far-off day
  Will gladden my heart once more.

Whoever has lived in a toy-strewn home,
  Though feeble he be and gray,
Will yearn, no matter how far he roam,
  For the glorious disarray
Of the little home with its littered floor
  That was his in the by-gone days;
And his heart will throb as it throbbed before,
  When he rests where a baby plays.