Dark As A Dungeon

(album: The Many Moods Of Belafonte - 1962)

Come all you young fellers so young and so fine
Seek not your fortune in the dark dreary mine
It'll form as a habit it'll seed in your soul
Till the blood in your veins runs black as the coal

For it's dark as a dungeon and it's damp as the dew
Where the dangers are double the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines
Oh God, it's dark as a dungeon way down in the mines

Oh, it's many a man I've known in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like a fiend for his dope a drunkard his wine
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine

Oh,I hope when I die and the ages do roll
Yes, my body will harden and turn into coal
And I look from the door of my heavenly home
To see a poor miner a digging my bones