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Here on these cliffs of Dover
So high you can't see over
And while your head is spinning
Hold tight, it's just beginning
You come from parents wanton
A childhood rough and rotten
I come from wealth and beauty
Untouched by work or duty
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together
I found you, a tattooed tramp
A dirty daughter from the labour cans
I laid you down on the grass of a clearing
You wept but your soul was willing
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together
And my parents will never consent to this love
But I hold your hand
Meet me on my vast veranda
My sweet, untouched Miranda
And while the seagulls are crying
We fall but our souls are flying
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, oh my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together
So high you can't see over
And while your head is spinning
Hold tight, it's just beginning
You come from parents wanton
A childhood rough and rotten
I come from wealth and beauty
Untouched by work or duty
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together
I found you, a tattooed tramp
A dirty daughter from the labour cans
I laid you down on the grass of a clearing
You wept but your soul was willing
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together
And my parents will never consent to this love
But I hold your hand
Meet me on my vast veranda
My sweet, untouched Miranda
And while the seagulls are crying
We fall but our souls are flying
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, my love
And oh, my love, oh my love
And oh, my love, my love
We both go down together
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For the longest time I kept wondering how he could refer to Miranda as untouched if he "laid her down in the grass of a clearing." But if it were two women, it's a great deal more possible that Miranda could still be considered untouched.
In my mind it makes more sense if this is a story of a love between two women.
So high you can't see over
And while your head is spinning
Hold tight, it's just beginning"
Maybe those words just mean that they are both so in love that they get that weird butterfly-in-your-stomach feeling.
"We fall, but our souls our flying"
They fall in love, they fall in embrace, ect.
If they didn't die, then the only lyric that confuses me is "You wept, but your soul was willing". It wouldn't make sense.
Now, lets say that they do both die. Then, the lyrics:
"Here on these cliffs of Dover
So high you can't see over
And while your head is spinning
Hold tight, it's just beginning"
is them, holding hands, looking over the edge, thinking their final thoughts before they leap.
"You wept, but your soul was willing"
Miranda didn't want to die, who does? But she is willing to do it, for the sake of love.
"We fell, but our souls were flying"
They are literally falling of the cliff at this point. They have accepted their death, and while I'm not saying that they're happy about dying, they're glad that they will get to be together forever.
"We both go down together"
They both jump and plummet to earth together.
If they both did die, AND this is the prequel to LAL, then maybe the "dry ravine" was the ground underneath the cliff. Miranda was pregnant and literally about to give birth when she jumped, and I think maybe she survived a little longer, and was able to push Leslie out. Or Leslie was never actually birthed, but she became a ghost anyway.
Another crazy idea: Miranda and the narrator had a baby together, but, unable to take all the ridicule of their "socially wrong" relationship, killed themselves. The narrator's parents, while they disliked it, took the baby under their wing. The baby grew up to be Leslie's mother, and we all know what happened after that.
adjective
1 (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked: sheer wanton vandalism.
2 (esp. of a woman) sexually immodest or promiscuous.
• literary growing profusely; luxuriant: where wanton ivy twines.
• literary lively; playful: a wanton fawn.
Basically what I am asking is, if I wanted to send this to a loved one, would I be unintentionally insulting their parents? Are they... promiscuous parens? Unprovoked...by what?
It mentions the character's dynamic upon their first meeting ('A childhood rough and rotten/I come from wealth and beauty, untouched by work or duty.') Tess is a 'dirty daughter from the labour cans' when they first meet and remains so for a lot of the novel. The lyrics even contain Hardy's 'rape' scene in the woods - 'I laid you down in the grass of a clearing/You wept but your soul was willing.' It summarises quite well what happens in that scene (from Alec's perspective at least.)
The thing is that Tess and Alec both 'go down together' so to speak. (Careful, book spoilers ahead!) Tess murders Alec and in so-doing condemns herself to death. They both die together in a way. Additionally, when each character makes an attempt to better themselves in the novel (Tess through marrying Angel and Alec through joining the Church) they stop after coming into contact with each other and fall back into old habits. It's as if they're pulling each other down.
The 'cliffs of Dover' are imagery from the First World War and the military explanation makes a lot of sense, though.
The man in We Both Go Down Together is wealthy. (I come from wealth and beauty/Untouched by work or duty)
The woman in We Both Go Down Together is poor. (You come from parents wanton/A childhood rough and rotten)
The man falls in love with the woman. God knows whether it is true love or not, but he loves her passionately enough to go against his parent's wishes, in which he does by raping her against her will. read; (I laid you down on the grass of a clearing/You wept but your soul was willing)((read; I raped her in a field somewhere, she fought but she was actually enjoying it)) I don't think he used very good protection, and he might have made the poor-girl pregnant.
Now, the man knows that his parents would never consent to this love, so he waits a good long time and plans for him and his 'Miranda' to meet by the cliffs, so they could be immortalized in soul. and to also note that the man would rather commit suicide than let his folks find out he banged a peasant-girl. So he tries to get her to jump. Now this part is a little bit shady, but I think our mother steps back right as they jump, so she survives. Now there is no proof or hint in the song that suggests this, but if you look carefully at the tense that the song was written in, the song seems to take place during the time in which he was asking her to meet him to jump. (We fall but our souls are flying I read like we WILL fall but our souls are flying. you know why? because when he says meet me at my vast veranda he says MEET which is future tense. so the jumping hasn't happened yet, so from that I gathered that he is calling for her to jump.) And what comes next is a mystery, because it is up to the listener to decide whether the girl (who definitely doesn't want to die with an evil rich douche who raped her, mind you) jumps or not.
I don't think she jumps, I think she runs away, births Leslie Ann Levine in a dry Ravine, and continues living her life plagued by thoughts of her dead child and rapist. this is how leslie ann levine haunts her. Which kindof ties in with tps12
Having looked and listened to the lyrics it's a little dissapointing in some ways for me. While being a more interesting narrative it kinda ruins one of the most romantic lines (at least when it's sung) - "we fall but our souls are flying". Still gives me goosebumps.
I didn’t set out to write a prequel — it happened that the characters in “We Both Go Down Together,” as they floated into view, were taking on peculiar similarities to the peripheral (and dead) figures that the titular Leslie spends four minutes cursing. A wealthy cad, a ruined naif, and a bit about a non-consensual tryst. So I had it in my head that the impregnated mother of Leslie, standing there over the cliffs as her sweetheart/rapist attempts to convince her to commit suicide with him, politely declines, pushes him over the edge and heads off into the sunset, or at least into her fate of giving birth in a ditch and dying.
Here. Quit arguing about it.
Also the word "tramp" isn't always synonymous with prostitute as so many think. Tramp can mean homeless person, someone who travels about (like you would in a labour camp), or just someone generally frowned upon by society. So if we take 'tramp' to mean someone with no pernament home (such as a worker in a labour camp) then it really isn't all that insulting.