Be - Intellectual

Could be a wink to a Hemmingway quote “Oh, darling, you will be good to me, won’t you? Because we’re going to have a strange life.” from A Farewell to Arms. The song describes the strangeness of life and especially of our times. Hozier recently liked this quote on Twitter and I immediately thought of this song.

Atlas is a figure in Greek mythology. In antiquity, he was credited with inventing the first celestial sphere. In some texts, he is even credited with the invention of astronomy itself. He, a Titan, was condemned after the Titans were defeated in their war against the Olympians. His punishment was to hold the celestial heavens for eternity.

“Acting the maggot” is an Irish slang phrase meaning to act in a lighthearted, non-serious manner.

Linking back to the previous references to the Original Sin, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Adam quite literally has no kind words left for Eve after the Fall. He blames her for what he sees as their doom, as well as referencing to Eve as “that bad [w]oman”. Despite this, Eve still shows great affection for Adam, as the narrator is asking his love to do for him.

The song references the fall of Adam and Eve several times, but this line specifically discusses how that decision did not necessarily negatively affect humanity. God and heaven have ignored all happiness since the first sin, however the speaker asks the question who suffered most from the sin?

Hozier has questioned religious values several times, including in “Take Me to Church” and “Moment’s Silence”, however this song questions how sin is considered in the bible. This line claims that by ignoring sinful but fun and exciting behavior, the heavens themselves are detrimented.

Here, Hozier could be talking about the same theme used in the beginning of the song, of the earth returning from it’s current state of calamity to a more peaceful or natural state, before any of the issues mentioned in the song ever existed. He is telling the earth to be as it was before humanity corrupted it.

St. Peter is one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, also known as the “Prince of the Apostles”.
Though, in traditional catholic art, St. Peter is never depicted as literal gatekeeper of Heaven, in popular culture, he is believed to guard the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Those, who are not fit to enter Heaven, denied by St. Peter and sent to Hell.

Here, Hozier paints an image of the saint who, tired of years of guarding and irritated by humanity, closes the gateway to Heaven, thus sending every new soul to Hell.

Here Hozier appears to be expanding on the previous line, “When St. Peter loses cool and bars the gates.” “Nobody” could be a reference to either God or St. Peter, while “upstairs” is a reference to Heaven, or more abstractly, an afterlife.

At this point in time for the narrator, all souls are now damned to hell, since Heaven is no longer receiving them.

Meaning the sense of running out of time, in terms of the previous lyrics, the issue of climate change. Eventually, there will be nothing people/humanity can do but watch as the world dies.

He is saying to love and act in the way you want, regardless of how the public may view you. It is important to be your truest self and act in that way than hide behind how you are expected to act.

Hozier is referencing to US President Trump here, criticizing him and slickly saying that when or if Trump is reincarnated and comes back to Earth and is born as an immigrant that he might be on a ship of refugees rejected in the same kind of treatment he’s displayed towards others. An ironic twist of fate.

With industrialization and the sprawl of human civilization, it’s quite rare for people to hear the song of the birds. Hearing the birds again means the earth has once again reverted back to a natural state, how it was before humans came.

This line also bears similarities to the Song of Solomon 2:12, which proclaims:

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
—King James Bible

This description of an environment continues the theme of the album, of ambiguously post-apocalyptic wastelands.

Hozier explained the lines in an interview with Entertainment,

It’s about the myth of the Garden of Eden, about original sin. That myth is about two human beings being told what not to do and, in doing it, they perform an act of love, which upsets a greater power than themselves and they are cast out. I’m viewing their actions instead as liberating, and as a very necessary action. It’s not so much a sin as a vital act of protest.

Eve was seduced by the the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as this would lead to “[her] eyes [to] be opened, and [Adam and Eve would] be like God, knowing good and evil”. She shared the fruit with Adam, which resulted in them being expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Though different teachings treat the fall the same way as original sin, regarding to it as “the stem of all evil” and “corruption of the human kind”, Hozier refers to it as the act of freedom and rebellion against the God and alludes to Eden as prison. He encourages his lover to not bow down to the uniformity of the society and “free” him as Eve freed Adam.

This is a reference to Donald Trump’s television show The Apprentice where he became famous for saying “you’re fired.”

Sea levels are rising faster and faster due to climate change and lack of action.

There are two things the line could be referencing. He could be continuing the spiritual element by referencing bodies starving at the gates of heaven, because “St. Peter bars the gates”.

The second option is referencing immigration over the southern border, as suggested by his previous mentions to Trump. He also chooses to use the word bodies instead of a more positive one like people or migrants, adding to the disturbing imagery of human bodies starving because they are stuck on the other side of the border. Hozier has gotten political in other songs like Nina Cried Power and this criticism is a common one.

He could be also drawing a similarity between the two, suggesting that Trump closing the border would be like Saint Peter closing the pearly gates.

The line “scorches the hillside and salts every root” refers to how when armies surrender, the surrendering army tends to destroy the land, to render it useless for the troops to come. Scorching the hillside is refers to scorched-earth policy, meanwhile heavily salted soil is useless to agriculture.
The line is followed by the starving of military troops.
Keeping with the song’s apocalyptic theme, it could possibly reference the making of a wasteland by human spite and cruelty.

Following the themes of radical love and sexual liberation, the narrator views the Original Sin as liberating for humanity, rather than something to be ashamed of.

Adam & Eve were cast out of Eden for rebelling against God through an act of love; the narrator believes this is something to be revered, not ashamed of. The narrator/Hozier is telling us to us to remain hopeful in the face of tragedy and to love one another, through it all.

In Genesis, Adam is identified as the first man ever created. This “new beginning” would have been a great shock to the world. Even if something as significant as the beginning of mankind occurs, Hozier says that they have no reason to change.

It’s also about the discovery of the orgasm by Adam, in line with Hozier’s thematic aligning of romance and sex.

Hozier tweeted this as an answer when asked about the meaning of this line:

A line reminiscent of the “widening gyre” of William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”, another piece with a strong apocalyptic theme:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…"

Like Yeats, Hozier seeks to convey the feelings of hopelessness which arise when “things fall apart”–making his exhortations to “be!” in the chorus all the more empowering.

Hozier also references “The Second Coming” in his earlier song “NFWMB”.