What is home without a mother
Alice Hawthorne
1.
What is home without a mother,
What are all the joys we meet?
When her loving smile no longer
Greets the coming coming of our feet;
The days seem long, the nights are drear,
And time rolls slowly on:
And oh how few are childhood's pleasures,
When her gentle, gentle care is gone.
2.
Things we prize are first to vanish;
Hearts we love to pass away,
And how soon, 'een in our childhood
We behold her turning, 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, on earth her last.
3.
Older hearts may have their sorrows,
Griefs that quickly die away,
But a mother lost in childhood
Grieves the heart 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, without her there.
