1 Your memory goes back tonight to when you were a boy,
Before you trod the paths of sin and wrong;
To childhood’s happy carefree days of frolic and of joy,
When life was filled with sunshine and with song.
Refrain:
Your mother’s heart is breaking for her boy,
For him who once was all her hope and joy;
O retrace the path you’ve trod, and come back to mother’s God,
For your mother’s heart is breaking for her boy.
2 Your memory goes back tonight to when you were a boy,
When at your mother’s knee you learned to pray;
When weary of your frolic and when tired of ev’ry toy,
You knelt beside her knee at close of day. [Refrain]
3 But you have left you childhood home, rejected mother’s God,
In sin and shame you will you life destroy;
The voice of God is calling: “O retrace the path you’ve trod,”
Your mother’s heart is breaking for her boy. [Refrain]
Source: Alexander's Hymns No. 3 #148
Rv Haldor Lillenas DMus Norway/USA 1885-1959. Born at Stord, near Bergen, Norway, his father sold their 15 acre farm in Norway and emigrated to the U.S., buying a farm in Colton, SD. After he built a sod house, the family (wife and three chldren) also came to SD in 1887. They moved to Astoria, Oregon in 1889, where Lillenas learned English and began writing song lyrics at an early age. In 1900 the family moved again to Roseville, MN, where he worked as a farm laborer and began attending a Lutheran high school at Hawick, MN. He sold a few songs at age 19. At age 21 he began writing more songs, encouraged by some earlier ones becoming popular (“He set me free” was one). His mother died in 1906 and his father returned to ND, but Li… Go to person page >
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