Dark As A Dungeon (From The Documentary Film “From the Ashes”)

Come all you young fellers, so young and so fine

And seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary mine

It'll form like a habit and seep through your soul

'Til the stream of your blood flows black as the coal

It's dark as the dungeons and damp as the dew

Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few

Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines

It's dark as the dungeons way down in the mines

There's 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 mine

It's dark as the dungeons and damp as the dew

Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few

Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines

It's dark as the dungeons way down in the mines

Come midnight or morning or middle of day

It's the same to the miner who labors away

For the demons of death often come by surprise

One fall of the slate and you're buried alive

Oh, it's dark as the dungeons and damp as the dew

Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few

Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines

It's dark as the dungeons way down in the mines

I hope when I'm dead and the ages shall roll

My body will blacken and turn into coal

I'll look from the door of my heavenly home

And pity the miners who dig in my bones

It's dark as the dungeons and damp as the dew

Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few

And the rain never falls and the sun never shines

And it's dark as the dungeons way down in the mines

Come all you young fellers, so young and so fine

And seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary mine