Paradise

Song Paradise
Artist John Prine
Album In Person & On Stage

Lyrics

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western
Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg CountyDown by the green river where paradise lay?""Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askingMister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away"
Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the
Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by
Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg CountyDown by the green river where paradise lay?""Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askingMister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away"
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg CountyDown by the green river where paradise lay?""Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askingMister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away"
When I die let my ashes float down the
Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the
Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to
Heaven with paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever
I am"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg CountyDown by the green river where paradise lay?""Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askingMister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away"