Cemetary Song

Joseph C. Montgomery was a very wealthy man
He spent his time saving dimes, and he purchased lots of land
But despite the number in the bank, of the money he had saved
The only number Time remembered was written on his grave

And the ghosts around the graveyard aren't singing
For the cemetery isn't home to any ghosts at all
And the somber silence sits for years
And softly spends its secret tears
On the women we've forgotten and the men we can't recall

Private Harold Miller, U.S. Marine Corps
Well, he yelled and cursed and spat and cried when they drafted him to war
They shipped him off to a foreign land, and he gripped a rifle in his hand
And it says here that he fell, in honor, in 1944

And the ghosts around the graveyard aren't chilling anymore
They're already moving forward to another little war
And the somber silence sits for years
And softly spends its secret tears
On the women we've forgotten and the men we can't recall

Now the writing on this headstone has faded through the years
And though I strain to read the name I cannot make it clear
All I know about this old Joe is that he was alive
From January 1812 to June 1905

And the ghosts around the graveyard aren't singing
For the cemetery isn't home to any ghosts at all
And the somber silence sits for years
And softly spends its secret tears
On the women we've forgotten and the men we can't recall

You can pull yourself together, you can tear yourself apart
You can live a fuller life than most, or you can end before you start
You can take all that you find, but at the ending of your life
You're just a father, or a mother, or a husband, or a wife

And the ghosts around the graveyard aren't singing
For the cemetery isn't home to any ghosts at all
And the somber silence sits for years
And softly spends its secret tears
On the women we've forgotten, And the men we can't recall