Always Suffering

Song Meaning

“Always Suffering” opens with a deceptively gentle invitation: “Let’s take a walk just you and me.” This sets a wistful, reflective tone, immediately tinged with regret for “days gone by.” The dominant emotion is one of profound, inescapable loss. The lyrics quickly establish a stark contrast between a resilient past and a crushing present. The narrator recalls a time when, amidst a “wandering” and “wavering” world, they “walked a steady line” and “kept on trying.” This memory of shared strength makes the repeated chorus – “Always suffering / Already lost” – hit with a devastating finality, suggesting that despite past efforts, the battle is definitively over. This shift is powerfully articulated through imagery. Sunny “summer days” when the narrator would “sing a lovers song” and the “sun shined on” give way to a bleak present where “the rain is falling slow” and “nights grow long.” The poignant line “the train cries out so hauntingly / She is gone” marks a specific, irreparable absence, transforming the general suffering into a concrete, personal grief. Even a desperate plea in the third verse to “Let there be hope” and for love to “revive” is immediately undercut. The fleeting possibility of renewal is crushed by the return to the chorus, “But we’re always suffering / We’re already lost.” The closing image of “life is but a chance / On a wind swept hill” with “seeds of love are swirling above” suggests a fragile, almost futile existence, where even the potential for new growth is left to the mercy of an indifferent, desolate landscape.