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