| Grateful Dead – Althea Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"Althea" is a playful but realistic scenario of two flawed and suspicious people looking for love. This song is told in narrator form and he's trying to tell her whats bothering him and she always has the perfect comeback. Commintment, free spirtedness, and staunch bacherlorhood are some of the themes delt with here, complemented with a warm score that gave the Dead room for volcanic instramental expression. The line " you may be a clown on the burying ground or just another pretty face/ you may meet the fate of Ophelia to sleep and perchance to dream" directly links with a scene from ~Hamlet, one of Shakespears darkest plays. After Ophelia has commited sucicide in this tragedy, two clowns dig her grave. They unearth the skull, which Hamlet holds during his "Alas, poor Yorick" solilouy. Earlier, before the suicide , Hamlet himself questioned, "To be or not to be" and mused about hereafter: " To die , to sleep-to sleep-perchance to dream" concluding that "dread of something after death" made people unwilling to flee the burdens of life. "You may be saterdays child all grown old" refers to the famous proverbial nursery rhyme regarding the atributes an individual acquires according to the day of the week on which they were born. Hunter may have also been influenced by "To Althea from Prison," by Richard Lovelace, a seventeenth-century poem which deals with unrequited love. When love with unconfined wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered to her eye, The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads with roses bound, Our hearts with loyal flames; When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go free, Fishes that tipple in the deep Know no such liberty. When, like committed linnets, I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty, And glories of my King; When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, Enlarged winds that curl the flood Know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty. ~and thats my meaning for ya! :) |
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| Grateful Dead – Althea Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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