Enough already, with these ridiculous vampire notions! Townes wrote the song decades before "Twilight", black-clad Goths, and the current obsession with mythical blood suckers. “Rake” is a straight forward tale of a young debaucher who pays a price for his hedonism. Only the meaning of the final stanzas is truly debatable. If Townes intended a specific meaning, and he was notoriously vague on such topics, I would suggest the following: Because “he trembles, he’s bent, and he’s broken” the narrator has suffered a real physical decline. Saying that “..the night air’s like fire on my skin, and even the moonlight is blindin” sounds a lot like the rake is describing the neurological effects of tertiary syphilis. Research Argyll Robertson pupils online and note how they will not adjust to changing light levels. The dark glasses popular in the late 19th century were probably worn by more syphilis suffers than they ever were by card sharks, like the Doc Holliday character portrayed by actor Val Kilmer in the film “Tombstone”.
Enough already, with these ridiculous vampire notions! Townes wrote the song decades before "Twilight", black-clad Goths, and the current obsession with mythical blood suckers. “Rake” is a straight forward tale of a young debaucher who pays a price for his hedonism. Only the meaning of the final stanzas is truly debatable. If Townes intended a specific meaning, and he was notoriously vague on such topics, I would suggest the following: Because “he trembles, he’s bent, and he’s broken” the narrator has suffered a real physical decline. Saying that “..the night air’s like fire on my skin, and even the moonlight is blindin” sounds a lot like the rake is describing the neurological effects of tertiary syphilis. Research Argyll Robertson pupils online and note how they will not adjust to changing light levels. The dark glasses popular in the late 19th century were probably worn by more syphilis suffers than they ever were by card sharks, like the Doc Holliday character portrayed by actor Val Kilmer in the film “Tombstone”.