Bright happy days : or, the home of my childhood / words by Marshall Locke music by Barclay Walker

VERSE 01: The other day while strolling through a distant part of town,/I came upon a cottage; its fence had fallen down;/Its windows, too, were broken and the sign was up “For Rent.”/It touched my heart, for there it was my childhood days were spent./’Twas on that dear old broken gate I many times had swung,/And often had the dooryard glad with childish laughter rung/How often had my mother’s voice called from the kitchen door/What would I give if I could live my childhood’s days once more.
CHORUS: Bright happy days of sweet long ago,/Fond recollections weave around me so./Voices of old,/I’ll find them I know,/Up where my mother went so long ago.
VERSE 02: Then strangely moved, I entered at the door, that oft before,/A thoughtless schoolboy, I had slammed a thousand times or more;/And passing through the narrow hall, the years rolled back again,/Until I seemed but coming home a barefoot boy of ten./A sister’s voice I seemed to hear as with her doll at play,/Her merry trill the house would fill the happy live long day/A loving mother kissed her boy and lavished words of praise;/What would I give if I could live a gain those happy days.
VERSE 03: While moving o’er the creaking floor that shook beneath my tread,/What tender recollections came of days that long had fled;/And passing to the room beyond the little kitchen stair,/I bowed my head for there it was we always met in pray’r/My father’s voice I heard again read from that Book of Old/Those wondrous words of truth he loved far better than all gold/White father, mother, sister, all joined in the song of praise;/Oh, heaven surely must be made of childhood’s vanished days.