A ballad from 1854
Words and music by Alice Hawthorne (Septimus Winner)
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by Benjamin R. Tubb:
Lyrics
- What is home without a mother,
What are all the joys we meet?
When her loving smile no longer
Greets the coming of our feet;
The days seem long, the nights are drear,
And time rolls slowly on,
And oh how few are childhoods pleasures,
When her gentle gentle care is gone. - Things we prize are first to vanish;
Hearts we love to pass away.
And how soon, e’en in our childhood,
We behold her turning gray;
Her eye grows dim, her step is slow,
Her joys of earth are past;
And sometimes ‘ere we learn to know her,
She hath breath’d on earth her last. - Older hearts may have their sorrows,
Griefs that quickly die away;
But a mother lost in childhood,
Grieves the heart from day to day.
We miss her kind, her willing hand;
Her fond and earnest care;
And oh! how dark is life around us,
What is home without her there
Sung here by Vancha March: