Blue Highway - Only Seventeen lyrics

Down in this place of endless night By the pale blue glow of a carbide light Where your next breath could be your last Taken by a roof fall, or methane gas He was just a young boy, only seventeen With a heart filled with life and a head filled with dreams Biding his time down in the ground Until one night he heard that awful sound The timbers cracked as the top came in He the cries and prayers of some mighty men Saying “God have mercy on our poor souls Must we all perish for this seam of coal?” It's been fifty years since those lives were lost But in a miner's world there's still an awful cost No one knows for sure, but many men have seen The pale figure of a miner, only seventeen