Dark As a Dungeon

Come all you young fellers so young and so fine
And seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine
It'll form like a habit and seep through your soul
Til the stream of your blood flows as 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 is many a man I have seen in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like the fiend with his dope and the 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 the 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

For 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 diggin' 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 a dark dreary mine