Arrows

The song is a narration on the novel 'Brideshead Revisited' by Evelyn Waugh. The first section of the song refers to the main character, Charles Ryder, meeting his 'best and only' friend, Lord Sebastian Flyte at the station before returning to Flyte's estate, Brideshead.

'Stay all day Up in your rooms now That’s not a problem You’ve ever seen'

Refers to Sebastian's decline into alcoholism, a subject that dominates the first half of the book.

'I awoke Up in a bedroom You’ve gone up hunting I was asleep Spend my day Out at the fountain That’s not a problem You’ve had foreseen'

At one point in the novel Sebastian leaves for a hunt but instead decides to go drinking at a local village. Throughout the novel Brideshead's fountain is the centre of dramas in Charles' life, particularly his years of happiness with Sebastian Flyte and much later, a quarrel with his lover Julia Flyte, Sebastian's sister.

'Fall on your knees Wasting your arrows You found you’ve walked along these halls'

At the very end of the novel, Charles, who during the second world war was forced to return to a dilapidated Brideshead, finally finds his religion in the chapel of Brideshead. He at this point had loved and lost both Julia and Sebastian and nearly all connection with the Flytes and Brideshead.

'Oh it’s no use at all... But that light* in the church could still remain'

Finally after he prays at the chapel, he sees the lantern lit over the tabernacle of a chapel that was due to be closed, but remains.

two corrections: "your leather suitcase burst at the seams" "oh it's no use at all"

this song is amazing and i don't know why they didn't put it on the album.

i think "you'd gone out hunting" means that she was seeing other people... while he was asleep in her bedroom. OUCH.