The album "SSOTSS" that this song is taken from is a concept album about the coming of a child with supernatural powers, the deadly sins and apocalypse (i think). The way I see it, the childs life is not all predestined - powers of evil and goog fight to dominate him and he may become one of the two: the prophet-saviour or something like the antichrist. I think it comes closer to the second in the end. And the songs follow him through different stages of his life.
So this song is best interpreted within the context.
I think it's about one of the deadly sins - lust, and a time in his youth when he slept with a girl and then left her thus becoming "the slaughter of innocence" - both the girl's and his own. Later he regrets it deeply. The carefree days of youth come to an end as "the book of life opens" before him and he realizes more and more that "the evil that men do lives on and on" because the past cannot be undone. The Shakespearean quote is very appropriate here indeed.
The album "SSOTSS" that this song is taken from is a concept album about the coming of a child with supernatural powers, the deadly sins and apocalypse (i think). The way I see it, the childs life is not all predestined - powers of evil and goog fight to dominate him and he may become one of the two: the prophet-saviour or something like the antichrist. I think it comes closer to the second in the end. And the songs follow him through different stages of his life. So this song is best interpreted within the context. I think it's about one of the deadly sins - lust, and a time in his youth when he slept with a girl and then left her thus becoming "the slaughter of innocence" - both the girl's and his own. Later he regrets it deeply. The carefree days of youth come to an end as "the book of life opens" before him and he realizes more and more that "the evil that men do lives on and on" because the past cannot be undone. The Shakespearean quote is very appropriate here indeed.