It's a sad story about a deer and a man
A romantic scene from a lullaby.
In a clearing green, where his eyes met mine.
I was frozen motion. Oh! His bow was raised.
Then the fleeting notion-that my life he'd save.
But I saw it coming, flying through the air.
Feathered backside humming. Miss me, hit me where
Where it will only hurt me, not a mortal wound.
Leave me lying dirty, someone would find me soon.
I have never been like this before.
Felt my body sinking to the grassy floor
I have never known a love like this.
Felt the flaming arrows of the Hunter's Kiss.
My life is not mine.
Like a dog or a wife.
He has taken his time.
He has taken my life.
I could see the steaming of his cloudy breath.
No, I was not dreaming.
I was next to death.
As I lay there twitching, then my legs he tied.
There was nothing missing on the day I died.
Chorus
Chorus
A romantic scene from a lullaby.
In a clearing green, where his eyes met mine.
I was frozen motion. Oh! His bow was raised.
Then the fleeting notion-that my life he'd save.
But I saw it coming, flying through the air.
Feathered backside humming. Miss me, hit me where
Where it will only hurt me, not a mortal wound.
Leave me lying dirty, someone would find me soon.
I have never been like this before.
Felt my body sinking to the grassy floor
I have never known a love like this.
Felt the flaming arrows of the Hunter's Kiss.
My life is not mine.
Like a dog or a wife.
He has taken his time.
He has taken my life.
I could see the steaming of his cloudy breath.
No, I was not dreaming.
I was next to death.
As I lay there twitching, then my legs he tied.
There was nothing missing on the day I died.
Chorus
Chorus
Lyrics submitted by LilBowieGirl
Hunter's Kiss Lyrics as written by Melora Creager
Lyrics © SONGS OF VIRTUAL
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Wretched Dido burns, and wanders frenzied through the city,
like an unwary deer struck by an arrow, that a shepherd hunting
with his bow has fired at from a distance, in the Cretan woods,
leaving the winged steel in her, without knowing.
She runs through the woods and glades of Dicte:
the lethal shaft hangs in her side.
Good call, heartwork, about the Virgil inference. But the tradition of depicting courtship in terms of a male hunter pursuing a doe goes way beyond Virgil; Petrarch, Wyatt, Shakespeare and many other widely-read poets all have sonnets with this theme. It's interesting that the sonnet tradition almost always identifies with the hunter, whereas this song takes the perspective of the hunted deer. It takes some measures to undermine the assumptions of the genre, especially in the fourth stanza, which brings the degrading and misogynistic implications of the tale to the surface: "My life is not mine / Like a dog or a wife."
Ultimately, it could still do more to subvert the genre, however. It is clear in this song that this model of courtship is bad for the woman, who is killed and carted off. But I would argue that it is also degrading to the man, and this is not represented in the song. The hunter in this song is the paradigm of idealized masculinity, powerful, enigmatic, stoic, godlike. He carts off his trophy at the end of the song with no indication that he has been reciprocally affected in any way by his violent act. While this may be the way some men prefer to see their own sexual "conquests," in reality sex and love are two-way streets and we would do well to abandon such an antiquated and patriarchal model of gender relations.
you never know.