A baby with a baby just barely seventeen

My mother mourned her innocence

While she bounced 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

I thought I could outrun the emptiness inside of me

So I went a little crazy, 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

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