Dark as a Dungeon - Robert Earl Keen

Come and listen you fellows, so young and so fine

And seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary mines

It will form as a habit and seep in your soul

'Till the stream of your blood is as black as the coal

It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew

Where danger is double and pleasures are few

Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines

It’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine

It’s a-many a man I have seen in my day

Who lived just to labor his whole life away

Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine

A man will have lust for the lure of the mines

I hope when I’m gone and the ages shall roll

My body will blacken and turn into coal

Then I’ll look from the door of my heavenly home

And pity the miner a-diggin' my bones