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If to borrow is to take and not return
I have borrowed all my lonesome life
And I can't, no I can't get through
The borrower's debt is the only regret of my youth
And believe me it's not easy when I look back
Everything I took got soon returned
Just to be at Innisfree again
All of the sirens are driving me over the stern
Just to be at Innisfree again
All of the sirens are driving me over the stern
One day at Innisfree
One day that's mine there
In the street one day I saw you among the crowd
In a geometric pattern dressed
Gleaming white just as I recall
Old as I get I will never forget it at all
Gleaming white just as I recall
Old as I get I will never forget it at all
One day at Innisfree
One day that's mine there
I have borrowed all my lonesome life
And I can't, no I can't get through
The borrower's debt is the only regret of my youth
And believe me it's not easy when I look back
Everything I took got soon returned
Just to be at Innisfree again
All of the sirens are driving me over the stern
Just to be at Innisfree again
All of the sirens are driving me over the stern
One day at Innisfree
One day that's mine there
In the street one day I saw you among the crowd
In a geometric pattern dressed
Gleaming white just as I recall
Old as I get I will never forget it at all
Gleaming white just as I recall
Old as I get I will never forget it at all
One day at Innisfree
One day that's mine there
Lyrics submitted by Cilogy
Track duration: 04:30
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I have borrowed all my lonesome life
**The song starts off by rethinking the nature of borrowing. In the context of this song, I believe the singer is referring to how he borrows love. To him, borrowing means taking someone's love but never offering his own; instead, when he is done, he gives everything back and leaves.
And I can't, no I can't get through
The borrower's debt is the only regret of my youth
**He regrets never trying to share his love.
And believe me it's not easy when I look back
Everything I took got soon returned
**His memories are filled with people who offered to share love, or some type of experience, but to them he was never able to offer anything back.
Just to be at Innisfree again
All of the sirens are driving me over the stern
**He's going mad longing for that time when he didn't care.
In the street one day I saw you among the crowd
In a geometric pattern dressed
Gleaming white just as I recall
Old as I get I will never forget it at all
Gleaming white just as I recall
Old as I get I will never forget it at all
**He'll always remember the girl who he thought he could love but never did. He'll always remember how she is just another person who gave him her love, and how he always viewed their situation as temporary and eventually gave back what he was borrowing. He knows that he has hurt people.
First it is set in his youth and he is stealing and the only thing he regretted was being punished. He looks back as to how things he took were returned (and he doesn't say by him which I think is significant) and I think this is up until the point this line is true until the siren/this beautiful girl he can't resist drives him over the stern, so most likely back into taking things.
Then he talks about her gleaming white, white being a classic sign of purity and virginity and he says he will never forget her so I'm guessing that's why.
I'm not really sure where Innisfree and a bedouin patterned dress comes into this. I was kind of thinking that this was him saying she really stuck out to him from anyone else there because the imagery one might think of when they hear Innisfree really contrasts a typical geometric bedouin pattern and if she was from anywhere in the middle east she would've been very different looking than anyone on an island in Ireland which maybe shows that this was just lust, which goes along with the theme of him taking things. I think how he talks of her now, never being able to forget her is a lot more in the tone of regret now as he looks back then how he would've talked about her at the time.
Does anyone think this a legitimate interpretation?
Most of our young lives are spent borrowing/taking from people who support us (parents, family, teachers, friends, etc). His life was given to him but he has not done anything substantial for anyone else/ made life of his own.
Also, everything thats been given to him has since "been returned," meaning he's lost it, or (more likely to me) he has freely given it back/gotten rid of it so that he can be "at Innisfree again". I'd never heard of it before, but judging by what other commenters have said I believe it to represent a complete freedom from our materialistic society today (in which, to be a part of it, you must take a lot from other people that you don't have yourself as well) as well as a "going back to nature." Sirens are driving him over the stern, meaning he cant take much more, and his ship is going far too slowly towards Innisfree for his liking.
"One day that's mine there" reinforces the idea that once he reaches this place, everything he has will be of his own want and making; no more relying on others as well as having space to his own.
Regarding the "Geometric dress gleaming white"... honestly no idea regarding the rest of my interpretation. Considering Spartan3500's interpretation, and the fact that good DMT itself is gleaming white, I believe that could fit in.
the old lyrics used to actually use that line, "bedouin dress is my only request now." if the DMT idea were true, i have a feeling *no one* would have made that connection if that was the lyric.
youtube.com/… (bedouin dress lyric is at 2:57)
That's how to Gaelic Irish word is pronounced.
Now i doubt very much that Mr Pecknold would sing this in multiple songs and not learn the pronunciation.
So, it mustn't be referring to that.
There's a park of some sort in New York by that name pronounced in that way, perhaps that's it?
Just think about it.
"If to borrow is to take and not return
I have borrowed all my lonesome life."
He was a thief.
"And I can't, no I can't get through
The borrower's debt is the only regret of my youth."
Now he's paying the price. He's imprisoned, "can't get through," meaning he can't get out. In retrospect he regrets his actions.
"And believe me it's not easy when I look back
Everything I took I'd soon return,"
I imagine him alone, sitting his cell, remembering over and over again what put him in there. Wishing he could change the past.
"Just to be at Innisfree again
All of the sirens are driving me over the stern."
Innisfree is a metaphor for freedom here. In the Yeats poem, Innisfree symbolizes peaceful, natural, out-doorsy (for lack of a better word lol) surroundings. So obviously he wants to breath fresh air and get out. The sirens can mean two things: police car sirens which is kind of too literal, and temptation. I like the temptation one. He's looking back at the what made him steal. Maybe he's a kleptomaniac ;)
"One day at Innisfree, that's mine there."
Fantasizing about freedom and a normal life. From the poem: "While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray/I hear it in the deep heart's core." Just like the character in the song, he can cling to the image of Innisfree to feel at peace in the least peaceful of times.
"In the street one day I saw you among the crowd
In a geometric pattern dress
Gleaming white just as I recall
Old as I get I will never forget it at all."
This is especially sad because I think it's him reminiscing about the love of his life. Or, she could have been someone he barely knew, but always admired. Either way, she represents the potential for love and happiness that he squandered. Now he can't forget that day, maybe the last day of freedom he had, even if he spends the rest of his life getting "old" in jail.
It's really such a perfect story that even if this interpretation is wrong, I don't give a shit because it's how I'll always hear it.
One day that's mine there