[Verse 1] Come gather ‘round people and listen a while To a tale from the ships of the gray Atlantic miles Of a boy from the hills where the cold winds would roam With hunger behind him and no work at home So he signed with a mark on a paper that day Seven years of his life just to sail far away To a land that was promised in bright golden dreams Where freedom was said to flow wide as the streams But the ink on that paper was colder than stone And the chains were just words though he traveled alone. [Verse 2] They packed them below where the lanterns burned low Through storms and through sickness the black waters would flow And the mothers held children and prayed through the night While the waves beat the hull in the pale morning light And the boy from the hills kept the paper he signed Seven years for the chance that his freedom he'd find But the ocean don’t bargain and hunger don’t wait And the new world was waiting with shovel and slate For the roads and the railbeds and canals yet to be Were carved by the hands of the poor from the sea. [Verse 3] Now the fields were all forests and the rivers ran wild And the bosses called out to each contract-bound child “Take the pick and the hammer, lay the stone straight and true For the roads of tomorrow depend upon you.” So they sweated through summers and froze through the snow With the mud to their knees where the cold rivers flow And the boy from the hills swung his hammer all day For a dream that kept drifting a little away Seven years was the promise that paper had said But the ground took its payment in blood that was shed. [Verse 4] Now the winters were bitter and the fevers ran fast And the work never ended though the daylight had passed And the boy from the hills who had sailed from the shore Felt the weight of those years like a chain at his core And one morning they found him where the road met the clay With the hammer beside him where he'd fallen to stay And the paper he'd carried still folded and worn Seven years for a freedom he'd never be born And the road that he built still runs over that land Though the dream slipped away from his cold, empty hand. [Final Verse] So remember the thousands whose names were untold Who traded their youth for a promise of gold For the bridges and highways and rails that we ride Were carved by the labor of those cast aside And the boy from the hills is forgotten by name But the stones that he laid still remember the same And the road that you travel when daylight is done Was built by the hands of the lost and the young So take off your hat when you walk by that way For the dream of a nation was bought with their pay.
