| Come up from the garden, boys
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| Listen unto me
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| I’ve got a brand new job for you
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| A new way to spread your seed
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| Papa, we’ve been workin'
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| For 13 years on end
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| I’ve taught your children the way of seeds
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| On these we can depend
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| Lay your shovels in the dirt
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| Your hands have turned green
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| I’ll teach ya’s how to hold your mouth
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| I’ll teach ya how to sing
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| You know, while you were away
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| Much rumors came to me
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| Your faith and prayer has turned us hard
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| And always left us hungry
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| Come up from the garden
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| We don’t want ya anymore
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| Lay down your shovels
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| We don’t want ya anymore
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| Sing from the gospel
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| We don’t want ya anymore
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| 13 years I walked and roamed
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| And questioned folk’s desire
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| I learned it good, cause I wrote it down
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| They want a gospel choir
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| Papa, I anticipate
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| Where your cunning plan do lead
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| The only way to open our mouths
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| Is to give us food to eat
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| Children come on the porch
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| And let the song begin
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| There won’t be worries about the food
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| In that earthly garden
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| Papa you sure spread it thick
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| That much we have realized
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| I would strike you down if you were of good stock
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| With my garden fertilized
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| Come up from the garden
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| We don’t want ya anymore
|
| Lay down your shovels
|
| We don’t want ya anymore
|
| Sing from the gospel
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| We don’t want ya anymore
|
| Well, you people hear my papa’s pretty, womanly voice?
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| Well papa, I say enough — we got our own way of singin'
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| (ba ba ba…)
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| Children, that song you sing
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| Has anger, spite and hurt
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| You sing it well, though it’s gone wild
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| My leave’s what you deserve
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| Your nerve, as thick as a city’s ways
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| To speak of our desert
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| You planted us with your fallacy
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| And return to double curse
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| Now child I’ve got the feeling
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| That you don’t want to join me
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| You’re soft on the eyes but hard in the head
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| Forever you’ll be green
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| Sir, my temper’s grown worse
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| Than a joker gone astray
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| If you don’t come work in your children’s garden
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| Then with your life, you will pay
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| Come up from the garden
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| We don’t want ya anymore
|
| Lay down your shovels
|
| We don’t want ya anymore
|
| Sing from the gospel
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| We don’t want ya anymore
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| Well papa, you children here this land you stuck us with
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| And for us to make it through we had to sing all day to make it bearable
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| So papa, if you don’t wanna be buried in this here garden
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| Then you better learn how to hold your mouth like a workin' man does
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| And sing (ba ba ba…) |