A Toast to Those Who Are Gone

Lyrics

[Verse 1] Many's the hour I've lain by my window And thought of the people who carried the burdens Who marched in the strange fields in search of an answer And ended their journeys an unwilling hero [Chorus] So here is a song to those who are gone With never a reason why And a toast of the wine at the end of the line And a toll of the bell for the next one to die [Verse 2] Back in the coal fields of old Harlan County Some talked of a union, some talked of good wages And they lined them up in the dark of the forest And shot them down without asking no questions [Chorus] So here is a song to those who are gone With never a reason why And a toast of the wine at the end of the line And a toll of the bell for the next one to die [Verse 3] And over the ocean, to the red Spanish soil Came the Lincoln Brigade with their dreams of a victory But they fell in the fire of Germany's bombings And they fell 'cause nobody would hear their sad warning [Chorus] So here is a song to those who are gone With never a reason why And a toast of the wine at the end of the line And a toll of the bell for the next one to die [Verse 4] In old Alabama, in old Mississippi Two states of the Union so often found guilty They came on the busses, they came on the marches And they lay in the jails or they fell by the highways [Chorus] So here is a song to those who are gone With never a reason why And a toast of the wine at the end of the line And a toll of the bell for the next one to die [Verse 5] The state it was Texas, the town it was Dallas In the flash of a rifle a life was soon over And nobody thought of the past million murders And the long list of irony had found a new champion [Chorus] So here is a song to those who are gone With never a reason why And a toast of the wine at the end of the line And a toll of the bell for the next one to die