Melancholy Child Lyrics - Pam Tillis

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