"All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here."
-Dante, The Inferno

Bring forth the Light,
To raze colonies
In a single cleansing breath.
Don't sleep, my queen;
The sun rises one less time
Than it will set.
Now overhead, the stars
That guided our forebears
Have turned to dust.
And underfoot, the churning
Framework of this earth
Succumbs to rust.

Bring forth the Light.

These dreams of Thunder displace,
Dismantled spirit's burnt bare-
Sylphs in the shards resounding,
"Open to the Field!"
Depatterned, floating in Grace,
Mapping the fragments...
"For to awaken and reassemble,
Enter by the narrow gates."

All has been inscribed
In the footnotes of time,
From the rising dead
To the falling rains;
From these proving grounds
To the burial mounds
Of fallen satellites'
Skeletal remains.

From a timeworn note's
Subtle feeling-tone,
To the coiled scales
In this mistaken mode.
Felt the birch bark walls
Of the temple shake,
When those who from heaven,
To this earth came.

From Eleusia
To the Killing Fields;
From the Promised Land
To the coming plague;
From the trenches of
Every whispered war,
To the future wreckage
Of the Large Array.

For the gate is wide,
And the way is broad,
That delivered me
(Insufferable in-between)
From the fleeting dawn
To this endless night,
In the labyrinth
Of the Iron Kings.

Now my footsteps take precedence as the traffic sounds fade,
And this city's lungs have purged their last breath.
I'm held captive at the curb before the World's End Lane,
Where I pledge my self to uncertainty.
From this shattered breaking point each new step must be
Nothing short of the saddest act of sorcery.
In search of that fleeting adversity,
O, merciless emptiness, that used to possess me...

So farewell Persephone, at rest on the altar,
Who dared to merge stone with the skies.
What curses of men guard the bridges you built, dear?
What doorways, what star-gates have you left behind?
So I'm following stardust, what's left of the twilight,
To get to that last jagged line.
To the edge of the earth by the age of rebirth.
I'll dissolve, end this realm, and reclaim what is mine.

Take in the knitting air,
Part with the cleansing breath,
Destiny turns the soils in which we manifest.
Suffer the burning coals,
Yield to the spiral tides,
Peer into the darkness, that all may be defined.

(swing wide the narrow gates)


Lyrics submitted by sporadicsarcasm

Enter By The Narrow Gates song meanings
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  • +1
    General Comment

    “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." - Matthew 7:13-14

    allhailspartaon September 20, 2014   Link

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Well, in my opinion this song is about being a young & maybe a little naive &/or introverted girl and finding yourself loving a man who is at first very charming, carefree & outgoing, and seems at first to be without limits, as in "There was a time you opened up every doorway you didn't mind if everything wasn't your way" then that man starts to gradually become more introverted & shows their more possessive/obsessive side to you as the relationship progresses, even while they keep up the appearance of being carefree & outgoing to everyone else, "Don't pull away that goes against what you told me I look in your eyes I realize what you've sold me is love in a vacuum" so you confront them about the way they're acting and of course they deny it, "I think you've changed but you insist that that's not true" quite possibly they are an addict of some sort, my guess would be cocaine, &/or showing very obsessive behavior towards you (early on in the video for this song we see the man hanging a picture up, it is a very large portrait of Aimee & it is prominently displayed in his/their apartment for the duration of the song), thus their "love in a vacuum", "You look so strange, so distant that you're hardly you Now I can see how you have been acting different You say it's me but I know that it isn't it's love in a vacuum" but still you are in love with them and don't want to leave them and you know that they are truly in love with you and they don't want you to leave them either, maybe they are convinced you can save them from themself, maybe they are so broken that the possibility of an overdose &/or suicide attempt is very real and you want to get through to them that their behavior not only dangerous but it is also just pissing you off and if they don't wise up they run the risk of loosing you, as in the lines "You will be lonely if you leave me alone", so you want to save them but can't get through to them due to the addiction &/or emotional problems they have, "Love in a vacuum and that's not enough love in a vacuum You will be lonely you'll be the only one who feels this way You will be lonely if you leave me alone You will be lonely you'll be the only one who feels this way it's just not enough" you want them to understand that the love they are giving you is not enough when it is filtered through the vacuum of their drug addiction &/or emotional impairment, "You will be lonely you'll be the only one who feels this way it's just not enough and just wait you will be lonely Love in a vacuum Love in a vacuum and that's not enough Love in a vacuum". 'Love In A Vacuum' for me is a hauntingly truthful acute argument on the loneliness of obsession and almost inevitable loss of love that follows people who are broken in some way or another; the obsessives, the coke heads, the drunks, addicts or the just-plain-old emotionally broken; a razor sharp, lyrically driven, deceptively poppy, yet ultimately-depressing-in-the-best-way song. Quintessential Aimee Mann.