Song Meaning

The narrator is pleading with a "gravediggress" to create a space for them to inter their "love" and "holy" feelings. This isn't a literal request for a burial plot, but a desperate need to put away something precious that has become too heavy or perhaps too painful to carry. The repeated plea establishes a tone of profound sorrow and a desire for finality, a wish to seal away emotions that are no longer serving them. The lyrics paint a picture of a desolate landscape mirroring the narrator's internal state. The "dried up brook" whose "babble turned to gravel" and the "burnt out tree" that once held a "murmur" but now has "no more bees" suggest a loss of vitality and sound. These images evoke a sense of decay and silence, where past vibrancy has faded into barrenness, reflecting the narrator's own emotional emptiness. The narrator contrasts past perceptions with present reality. They recall a time of pretending "it's spring" in "December," a hopeful delusion that now seems impossible. The "shy and tender breeze" is a pale imitation of the wind that once "speak and sing the leaves," highlighting a diminished capacity for joy or even sensation. This shift from vibrant past to muted present underscores a deep sense of loss and disillusionment. The introduction of the "old scarecrow wounded at the knee" with "button eyes" and "most of your stuffing" further emphasizes themes of brokenness and decay. Described as having "hay for a heart / And hay for a brain," the scarecrow appears hollow and perhaps even nonsensical, its sanity questioned based on its "momma." This figure seems to embody a profound, almost absurd, state of disrepair, resonating with the narrator's own desire to bury their feelings in a place of symbolic death and stillness.