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My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the ever-changing view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold
Once, amid the soft, silver sadness in the sky
There came a man of fortune, a drifter passing by
He wore a torn and tattered cloth around his leathered hide
And a coat of many colors, yellow, green on either side
He moved with some uncertainty, as if he didn't know
Just what he was there for, or where he ought to go
Once he reached for something golden hanging from a tree
And his hand came down empty
Soon within my tapestry, along the rutted road
He sat down on a river rock and turned into a toad
It seemed that he had fallen into someone's wicked spell
And I wept to see him suffer, though I didn't know him well
As I watched in sorrow, there suddenly appeared
A figure, gray and ghostly, beneath a flowing beard
In times of deepest darkness, I've seen him dressed in black
Now my tapestry's unraveling, he's come to take me back
He's come to take me back
An everlasting vision of the ever-changing view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold
Once, amid the soft, silver sadness in the sky
There came a man of fortune, a drifter passing by
He wore a torn and tattered cloth around his leathered hide
And a coat of many colors, yellow, green on either side
He moved with some uncertainty, as if he didn't know
Just what he was there for, or where he ought to go
Once he reached for something golden hanging from a tree
And his hand came down empty
Soon within my tapestry, along the rutted road
He sat down on a river rock and turned into a toad
It seemed that he had fallen into someone's wicked spell
And I wept to see him suffer, though I didn't know him well
As I watched in sorrow, there suddenly appeared
A figure, gray and ghostly, beneath a flowing beard
In times of deepest darkness, I've seen him dressed in black
Now my tapestry's unraveling, he's come to take me back
He's come to take me back
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The song definitely has mythical allusions. Perhaps the most important is to Homer's The Odyssey. Ullysses/Odysseus and Penelope, were married. Ulysses left to fight the Trojan War and was gone for 20 years. During that time, Penelope had many suitors. During that time, she worked on a tapestry, and told her suitors that she would decide once her tapestry was done, but would unravel it at night to avoid having to accept or reject their proposals. While Ulysses was gone, he was seduced by many beautiful women with magical powers, and Circe turned him and his men into pigs. When he finally returned, he came to Penelope dressed as an old man, in beggar's clothes, but then threw off those clothes and slayed Penelope's suitors. The song is about more than this, and there's also a biblical allusion to Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, but the Penelope/Ulysses story is a reference point for what the song's character is going through in terms of her own relationships with men, particularly the man who comes to take her back.