You can't forget your mother when the heart turns home / music by Jacob Henry Ellis words by Arthur E. Bucknam

VERSE 01: I am thinking tonight of the days once so bright,/In my dear childhood’s home for away/Just as plain as can be dear old scenes I can see,/So familiar to youth’s happy day./There’s a picture so dear in my mem’ry so clear,/’Tis the dearest the heart can recall/A face wondrous fair, though ‘tis wrinkled with care,/But ‘twill e’er be the fairest of all.
VERSE 02: By the old garden gate, there so oft she would wait,/For her boy when the long day was o’er/And it seems I feel not here sweet kiss on my brow,/That she gave in those fond days of yore./How I long now to be just a child at her knee,/By the side of her quaint old armchair/Where her lips so sweet, taught me first to repeat,/The dear words of my childhood’s first prayer.
CHORUS: Around the cottage door, the vines cling as of yore,/There’s a mother who waits all alone./Her face so kindly fair, all crowned with silv’ry hair,/You can’t get your mother, when the heart turns home.