Shrike by Hozier Lyrics Meaning – Unraveling the Poetic Symbolism of Love and Regret
Lyrics
Ah, but I’m singing like a bird ’bout it now
I couldn’t whisper when you needed it shouted
Ah, but I’m singing like a bird, ’bout it now
Words hung above, but never would form
Like a cry at the final breath that is drawn
Remember me love when I’m reborn
As a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn
Had no idea on what ground I was founded
All of that goodness is gone with you now
Then when I met you my virtues uncounted
All of my goodness is gone with you now
Dragging along, following your form
Hung like the pelt of some prey you had worn
Remember me love, when I’m reborn
As the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn
I fled to the city with so much discounted
Ah, but I’m flying like a bird to you now
Back to the hedgerows where bodies are mounted
Ah, but I’m flying like a bird to you now
I was housed by your warmth, thus transformed
By your grounded and giving and darkening scorn
Remember me love, when I’m reborn
As the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn
Within the tapestry of modern music, few artists weave lyrical narratives as rich and deeply textured as Hozier. His song ‘Shrike’ flutters at the periphery of his discography, a haunting ode to the dichotomy of human emotion, love’s intertwining with regret, and the eternally aching beauty of retrospection. ‘Shrike’ is more than a melody; it is a raw, bleeding-heart ode disguised as a song—the kind of song that weeps through guitars and haunts the silence that follows.
To peel back the layers of ‘Shrike’ is to dive headfirst into a complex ecosystem of symbolic lyricism. The song draws on the shadowed imagery of nature—a shrike upon a thorn—and binds it seamlessly with the human experience of loss and yearning. This analysis plucks each string of metaphorical significance, turning over Hozier’s carefully chosen words against the light to reveal a spectrum of love, loss, and self-realization.
The Shrike and the Thorn: A Tale of Regret and Recollection
A shrike, for those unfamiliar, is a bird known for impaling its prey on thorns. This ominous behavior becomes emblematic within the song, as Hozier laments his own inability to express love when it was needed most. The shrike symbolizes the singer as a creature of hindsight—sharp and clear in his intentions now, but having been once muted and passive.
As he sings of his transformation into the shrike, there is a heartbreaking irony. In this incarnation, he becomes capable of mounting his love upon the ‘sharp and glorious thorn’ of remembrance. It exemplifies the universal human battle: we are often most eloquent in reflecting upon what is lost, and the sharpest emotions clench our hearts once the opportunity to express them has slipped away.
The Pangs of Love Left Ungiven
What ails the protagonist of ‘Shrike’ is not simply the loss of love, but the grief over love unexpressed. ‘I couldn’t utter my love when it counted,’ Hozier confesses, painting a portrait of the silent sufferer, the tongue-tied lover whose words come too late. There is a visceral pain here—one that rings out for every listener who has ever loved silently, fiercely, perhaps too cautiously.
The relatability of this admission strikes a deep chord. We live in an age where proclamation is often relegated to digital screens, where the silent sacrifices of love go unchampioned. Hozier’s reflection on what wasn’t said, and the poignant declaration now sung ‘like a bird,’ elevates the song to a confessional altar of missed moments and unmade declarations.
Melancholy Metamorphosis: The Transformation Through Loss
In the flesh and bone of Hozier’s lyrics, the listener is witness to a transformation. ‘I was housed by your warmth, thus transformed,’ he states, alluding to a chrysalis-like change, cocooning and convoluted. This transformation through loss speaks to anyone who has found themselves reborn in the wake of an ending.
It is in this shift where Hozier’s songwriting genius shows its multi-dimensional face. The gentle and tender housing by another’s warmth becomes a site of metamorphosis. The warmth, both comforting and ultimately consuming, gives birth to the narrator’s new form—a revival laced with somber realization, emerging with the strength and doom of the shrike.
Return to the Hedgerows: Nostalgia’s Siren Call
The setting of a song can anchor its emotional potency, and in ‘Shrike,’ Hozier returns the listener to the ‘hedgerows where bodies are mounted.’ This conjures not only an image of shrike’s traditional hunting grounds but an emblem of nostalgia—a place to which one irrevocably returns, as love and memory are forever skewered upon the past’s immutable thorns.
This pull of nostalgia is a siren’s call, both beautiful and unsettling. Returning to the hedgerows signifies a return to the roots of love, to memories of what was once tender and pure before the final impalement. The beauty of this landscape is inseparable from its brutal truth, as is the case with many forms of looking back.
Echoes of Eternal Love and the ‘Glorious Thorn’
The recurring lyrical theme of the ‘sharp and glorious thorn’ within ‘Shrike’ epitomizes the stickiness of memory, the way love—once so close—pricks at the edges of the heart long after parting. It reverberates as both a tribute and a torture, an exaltation of what was and a piercing reminder of the separation. It’s a duality experienced in real-time, as listeners feel the music’s thorns tapping at their own chests.
This shrike, now singing and unburdened by silence, invites us to consider our glorious thorns. The song stands as an artistic monument, reminding us of what it means to have loved with a wildness that, once lost, becomes the sharpest of edges—one that we, like Hozier, learn to sing about only after the quietest of whispers have failed us.
