| PJ Harvey – The Last Living Rose Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| The Rose in the song title is an allusion to Englishness (i.e. an English Rose, the national flower of England), which appears to be the general theme of this piece. The use of 'Europeans' avoids offence by being used ironically (England is of course in Europe) and deliberately non-specific. There is also use of irony in the context of the description of 'beautiful England' being juxtaposed with lines alluding to the grey damp climate and past glories (e.g. 'flithiness of ages','battered books', 'dead sea captains'). Lyrically, the scene moves on to London (the capital city of England), where a Hogarthian picture of drunkenness is painted ('stinking alleys','drunken beatings'). This is matched with the lines 'Past the Thames River, glistening like gold, Hastily sold for nothing', perhaps an allusion to the City of London and the banking crisis (the Bank of England holds the UK's gold reserves). The Thames River may be used in this context to imply 2 sorts of bank - a riverbank and a bank holding gold. Silver in the last verse is a play on the use of the word gold in the previous verse. The subject matter of the final verse appears to represent the simple glories of nature and suggests that they are dying out ('the last living rose'), perhaps because we hold them to be of less value (silver) than that of economic wealth (gold). | |
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