Song Description
A while ago I was in the train and getting near Sligo ... A man got into the carriage and began to play on a fiddle .. The sounds filled me with the strangest emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no longer like a perfectly woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and flung into a corner. It said that the world was once all perfect and kindly, and that still the perfect and kindly world existed, but buried like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the fiddle. It said that if only they who lived in the Golden Age could die we might be happy for the sad voices would be still. But they must sing; and we must weep, until the eternal gates swing open.
"The Golden Age", Celtic Twilight (1893) W.B. Yeats
| Song Length |
2:39 |
Genre |
Rock - General, World - Celtic |
| Tempo |
Medium Slow (91 - 110) |
Lead Vocal |
Female Vocal |
| Mood |
Miserable, Moving |
Subject |
Crying, Regret |
| Similar Artists |
Natalie Merchant, Suzanne Vega |
Language |
English |
| Era |
2000 and later |
| |
Lyrics
I swear by the blood running red
By the stars in my eyes
By the charm above our bed
What's done is done
And we will ever be lamenting
No words can heal
Or bring you ease
Keep the flame flickering
Don't let the darkness win
And if there really is
A kind and perfect world
It's a buried mass of roses
Under spadefuls of earth
And we must weep
And we must sing
And keep the little flame
Flickering