[Verse 1:]
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to western Kentucky where my parents were born
There's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that all my mem'ries're worn

[Chorus:]
Daddy won't you take me back to Muglenberg County
Down by the Green River where paradise lay
I'm sorry my son but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

[Verse 2:]
Now sometimes we float on down the Green River
By the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with the rifles
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

[Chorus]

[Verse 3:]
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovels
They tortured the timber and they stripped all the land
They dug for the coal till the land was forsaken
And wrote it all down as the progress of man
[Chorus]

[Verse 4:]
When I die let my body float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to heaven with the paradise waitin'
Five miles away from wherever I am

[Chorus]