Melancholy Child

A baby with a baby

Just barely seventeen

My mother mourned her innocence

While she bounced me on her knee

A daddy on the road

Added to her tears and trials

Like silver rain they fell upon

This melancholy child

The sounds of my childhood

Still linger in my song

My mother's lullaby

That train that ran behind our home

A whippoorwill on a window sill

It should have made me smile

But everything sounds lonesome

To a melancholy child

Now a restless blood

Runs in our family

Thought I could outrun

The emptiness inside of me

So I went a little crazy

I went a little wild

Trying to outdistance

My own melancholy child

I met a kind and gentle man

Who thinks the world of me

And when he looks my way

It is a woman that he sees

But when I can't explain to him

The tears that fill my eyes

He takes me in his arms

And rocks his melancholy child

You take a black Irish temper

And some solemn Cherokee

A Southern sense of humor

And you got someone like me

But there are thorns on every rose

To this I'm reconciled

They're just a little sharper

To a melancholy child

And in my own babe's eyes

I see the signs of a melancholy child

Heaven help us all

Another melancholy child