PARADISE
Words & Music by John Prine
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 my times that my memories are worn
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal tran just 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 County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal tran just hauled it away
And 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 'til 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 County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal tran just hauled it away
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal tran just hauled it away
Copyright 1971 by Cotillion Music, Inc.
From the John Denver album "Rocky Mountain High"