This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
I sat within a valley green
I sat there with my true love
My heart strove to choose between
The old love and the new love
The old for her, the new that made
Me think on Ireland dearly
While soft the wind blew down the glade
And shook the golden barley
'Twas hard the woeful words to frame
To break the ties that bound us
But harder still to bear the shame
Of foreign chains around us
And so I said, "The mountain glen
I'll seek at morning early
And join the brave United Men
While soft winds shook the barley"
'Twas sad I kissed away her tears
Her arms around me clinging
When to my ears the fateful shot
Came out the wild wood ringing
The bullet pierced my true love's breast
In life's young spring so early
And all upon my breast she died
While soft winds shook the barley
I bore her to some mountain stream
And many's the summer blossom
I placed with branches soft and green
About her gore-stained bosom
I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse
Then rushed o'er vale and valley
My vengeance on the foe to wreak
While soft winds shook the barley
'Twas blood for blood without remorse
I took at Oulart Hollow
I placed my true love's clay-cold corpse
Where I full soon may follow
Around her grave I wandered drear
Noon, night and morning early
With aching heart when e'er I hear
The wind that shakes the barley
I sat there with my true love
My heart strove to choose between
The old love and the new love
The old for her, the new that made
Me think on Ireland dearly
While soft the wind blew down the glade
And shook the golden barley
'Twas hard the woeful words to frame
To break the ties that bound us
But harder still to bear the shame
Of foreign chains around us
And so I said, "The mountain glen
I'll seek at morning early
And join the brave United Men
While soft winds shook the barley"
'Twas sad I kissed away her tears
Her arms around me clinging
When to my ears the fateful shot
Came out the wild wood ringing
The bullet pierced my true love's breast
In life's young spring so early
And all upon my breast she died
While soft winds shook the barley
I bore her to some mountain stream
And many's the summer blossom
I placed with branches soft and green
About her gore-stained bosom
I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse
Then rushed o'er vale and valley
My vengeance on the foe to wreak
While soft winds shook the barley
'Twas blood for blood without remorse
I took at Oulart Hollow
I placed my true love's clay-cold corpse
Where I full soon may follow
Around her grave I wandered drear
Noon, night and morning early
With aching heart when e'er I hear
The wind that shakes the barley
Lyrics submitted by xrowanbraex
The Wind That Shakes the Barley Lyrics as written by Lisa Gerrard Brendan Perry
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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