Blog 2: Battle for Evermore

I have, for a very long time, been a big fan of the English band Led Zeppelin and have listened to their songs countless times but this song in particular always stood out. The lyrics are a bit hard to make out over the guitar and mandolin but I managed to get them on the internet. I used google as the search engine and that led me to Lyricsfreak.com (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/led+zeppelin/the+battle+of+evermore_20082162.html). here are the lyrics:

Queen of Light took her bow
And then she turned to go,
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom
And walked the night alone.


Oh, dance in the dark of night,
Sing to the morn-ing light.
The dark Lord rides in force tonight
And time will tell us all.


Oh, throw down your plow and hoe,
Rest not to lock your homes.
Side by side we wait the might
Of the darkest of them all.


I hear the horses' thunder
Down in the valley below,
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon,
Waiting for the eastern glow.


The apples of the valley hold
The seeds of happiness,
The ground is rich from tender care,
Repay, do not forget, no, no.
Oh, dance in the dark of night,
Sing to the morning light.


The apples turn to brown and black,
The tyrant's face is red.


Oh the war is common cry,
Pick up you swords and fly.
The sky is filled with good and bad
That mortals never know.


Oh, well, the night is long
The beads of time pass slow,
Tired eyes on the sunrise,
Waiting for the eastern glow.


The pain of war cannot exceed
The woe of aftermath,
The drums will shake the castle wall,
The ringwraiths ride in black,
Ride on.


Sing as you raise your bow,
Shoot straighter than before.
No comfort has the fire at night
That lights the face so cold.


Oh dance in the dark of night,
Sing to the mornin' light.
The magic runes are writ in gold
To bring the balance back.
Bring it back.


At last the sun is shining,
The clouds of blue roll by,
With flames from the dragon of darkness
The sunlight blinds his eyes.

The theme of this song is the battle between good and evil and it makes many refrences of this epic battle. As I listened to the song, the lyrics evoked images of midevil battling between good and evil like something out of the Lord of the Rings. This connection can clearly be noticed when the author says

"The pain of war cannot exceed
The woe of aftermath,
The drums will shake the castle wall,
The ringwraiths ride in black,
Ride on"


As I did more research on the song it turns out that Jimmy Page and Robert plant, who wrote the song together, were big fans of the series of books and are actually depicting a scene from the book in these lines. They mention "The Ringwraiths", these are are ghosts or spirits that serve as servants for a dark lord and are the enbodiment of evil in the books.

the song also mentions "the angels of avalon" reffering to good players in this battle. Avalon is reffered to as a remarkable island of many mysteries and anything coming from there is surely to be powerful.

The authors decide to end the poem by saying

"At last the sun is shining,
The clouds of blue roll by,
With flames from the dragon of darkness
The sunlight blinds his eyes"

In other words this shows how good finally prevailed to win over evil as the sun shone in the dark dragons eyes and the good worries were able to defeat it. This is trully a great song a great homage to a great story.

sources: http://www.freewebs.com/finduilas101/Aragorn-Return%20of%20the%20King.jpg
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/led+zeppelin/the+battle+of+evermore_20082162.html