Melancholy Child Lyrics

A baby with a baby
Just barely seventeen
My mother mourned her innocence
While she bounced me on her kneeA daddy on the road
Added to her tears and trials
Like silver rain they fell upon
This melancholy childThe sounds of my childhood
Still linger in my song
My mother's lullaby
That train that ran behind our homeA whippoorwill on a window sill
It should have made me smile
But everything sounds lonesome
To a melancholy childNow a restless blood
Runs in our family
Thought I could outrun
The emptiness inside of meSo I went a little crazy
I went a little wild
Trying to outdistance

My own melancholy childI met a kind and gentle man
Who thinks the world of me
And when he looks my way
It is a woman that he seesBut when I can't explain to him
The tears that fill my eyes
He takes me in his arms
And rocks his melancholy childYou take a black Irish temper
And some solemn Cherokee
A Southern sense of humor
And you got someone like meBut there are thorns on every rose
To this I'm reconciled
They're just a little sharper
To a melancholy childAnd in my own babe's eyes
I see the signs of a melancholy child
Heaven help us all
Another melancholy child