A Toast to Those Who Are Gone

Many's the hour I've lain by my window

and thought of the people who carried the burden

Who marched in the strange fields in search of an answers

And ended their journeys an unwilling hero

Here's 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

Back in the coal fields of old Harlan county

Some talked of the union, some talked of good wages

And they lined them up in the dark of the forests

And shot them down without asking no questions

Here's a song to those who are gone with never a reason why

And a toast of the wine to the end of the line

And a toll of the bell for the next one to die

And over the ocean, to the red Spanish soil

came the lincoln brigade with their dreams

But they fell in the fire of germany's bombing

And they fell 'cause no one would hear their sad warning

Here's 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

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 highway

Here's 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