What is Home Without a Mother?

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.

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, 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.

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.