A Drunkard’s Mother

Ah, none but a mother can tell you, sir, how a mother’s heart will ache
With the sorrow that comes of a sinning child, with grief for a lost one’s sake,
When she knows the feet she trained to walk have gone so far astray,
And the lips grown bold with curses that she taught to sing and pray!
A child may fear, a wife may weep, but of all sad things none other
Seems half so sorrowful to me as being a drunkard’s mother.