Melancholy Child Lyrics

Pam Tillis 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