Shield Your Eyes

I can't believe no one has commented on this one! This is one of my favourite DtR songs - if not for its simplicity but for the fact it says so much by saying so little.

In one of the interviews Pete did, he mentions how this was about a failing relationship. He's quite specific about how it's not failing because of the actual relationship itself, but because of obstacles related to the relationship (I'm guessing that it's a long-distance thing).

Basically, he indicates the song is about a long distance relationship that is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain - but that the distance is how the relationship came about in the first place "but the phrygian lion / with his excellent eyesight / is what makes it our love" (that is to say - the love we have for one another is what it is is because of how we came to be.)

It's a beautiful, beautiful song, about how sometimes the obstacles of love are both the cause and the downfall of the relationship, and how sometimes love just isn't enough.

Perfect, really.

I tried to find out more about the Phrygian Lion, but not much came up, just that lions accompanied the Phrygian mother goddess Cybele, and that there are a lot of gates flanked by stone lions in Phrygia (in modern day Turkey). But historically, lions have symbolized protection, and that these lions have "excellent eyesight" seem to mean that they can foresee the future, i.e. that the relationship will end.

"But I wish you could've warned me Of the Phrygian Lion, With his excellent eyesight, At the gate of our love." He's saying he wished he could have known that their relationship would end the way it did.

"And the Phrygian Lion, With his excellent eyesight, Is what makes it our love." And yet, this imminent end is what gives meaning to the relationship and makes it, in a way, more special than if they were meant to last. It's a sad but still beautiful sort of doomed love: "Under sweet autumnal skins is our myth dispelled. In your strange and simple way."