Paradise

This song was first released on the Rocky Mountain High album. It is the only album it has been released on.

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 mem'ries 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 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 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 train has 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 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 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 train has 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 train has hauled it away

Words and music by John Prine