This song is referring to the death of someone and the thoughts which accompany their passing.
"The light that hits the gloom around," is the light from the presence of their life as it fades away. A light extinguished.
"The footprints 'round this grave," are the paths of men who have walked along these roads before. Perhaps in reference to the road of life.
"Dried up roses scattered on the mound," refers to the fact that even the symbolic plants intended to honor of one's life dry up and are carried away by the wind themselves. This life and their remembrance too shall pass.
"Will ever the morning carry away, the souls..." is one pondering the meaning of this existence. If the souls of those remembered transcend the bounds of this earthly mortality, or fade into nothingness.
"Binding, unwinding," binding their life into one's memory, until the passing of time unwinds the memory until it is but a shadow of the vibrant image it once was.
CHORUS: "wondering who is the one," another question of existential angst. Who among us will be the next to depart from this life? "And when the day is late," is in reference not to the cycles of day and night, but the lateness of one's life. Others can often see a person's embarkation upon the road of demise and the eternity or lack of in which will soon be their destination.
And the final melody is mostly a literal declaration of a funeral service, except for the final line, "sleeping 'neath the ground is me." This is the final reference to one's own melancholy existential worries. Although at this point in time one is only observing the body of another in the grave, he/she knows that soon it will be them lying there.
The sad and beautiful guitar melodies serve to accentuate this overall theme. A combined feeling of sadness, beauty at the light shined upon the gloom from a life, acceptance of one's own temporary state of being, and the worry and questioning surrounding the nature of one's death. A true work of art.
This song is referring to the death of someone and the thoughts which accompany their passing.
"The light that hits the gloom around," is the light from the presence of their life as it fades away. A light extinguished. "The footprints 'round this grave," are the paths of men who have walked along these roads before. Perhaps in reference to the road of life. "Dried up roses scattered on the mound," refers to the fact that even the symbolic plants intended to honor of one's life dry up and are carried away by the wind themselves. This life and their remembrance too shall pass.
"Will ever the morning carry away, the souls..." is one pondering the meaning of this existence. If the souls of those remembered transcend the bounds of this earthly mortality, or fade into nothingness.
"Binding, unwinding," binding their life into one's memory, until the passing of time unwinds the memory until it is but a shadow of the vibrant image it once was.
CHORUS: "wondering who is the one," another question of existential angst. Who among us will be the next to depart from this life? "And when the day is late," is in reference not to the cycles of day and night, but the lateness of one's life. Others can often see a person's embarkation upon the road of demise and the eternity or lack of in which will soon be their destination.
And the final melody is mostly a literal declaration of a funeral service, except for the final line, "sleeping 'neath the ground is me." This is the final reference to one's own melancholy existential worries. Although at this point in time one is only observing the body of another in the grave, he/she knows that soon it will be them lying there.
The sad and beautiful guitar melodies serve to accentuate this overall theme. A combined feeling of sadness, beauty at the light shined upon the gloom from a life, acceptance of one's own temporary state of being, and the worry and questioning surrounding the nature of one's death. A true work of art.