Song Breakdown: ivy
“How’s one to know? I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones in a faith forgotten land”
The first sentence indicates that this love was unexpected, that the narrator didn’t intend for this, and yet, she’s fallen in love anyway. She reveals that she’s been meeting with her lover in a graveyard, the place where the “spirit meets the bones”, in a land where faith is forgotten, because the dead have no faith anymore, no thoughts, no more consciousness. There’s also the possibility that the speaker is suggesting people lose their faith when they die, because they find there’s nothing waiting for them, because god didn’t answer their prayers and let them live, or both. The line is rich with other meanings too; the spirit, what animates the speaker and gives her a reason to live for (as will be referenced by the line “I’d live and die for moments that we stole” later on), is given by meeting her lover, she’s more than just a collection of bones, someone hollowly living their life, it distinguishes her from the corpses surrounding them. It may even be an especially poetic metaphor for sex. As for the “faith forgotten”, she can finally be with her lover, another woman, because they’ve found a place without the oppressive controlling faith that surrounds them, they’re alone with only the dead. They forget their own faith, forget that when they’re in the ground they may suffer in hell.
“In from the snow, your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand”
Taylor introduces a contrast between the cold of the snow and the incandescence, the great heat, of their love, which offers a shelter from the oppressive cold. Does the cold symbolize the harsh conditions throughout history stamping out queer love? Maybe, maybe not. The cold may also reference the cold of the dead that surround them, a juxtaposition to their warm, living love, or be calling the speaker’s husband cold and lifeless. The use of the word “incandescent” is interesting, because incandescent means both glowing with great heat and glowing from something powered within, e.g. the incandescent lightbulb, the simple touch lights up the speaker from within (tying to “I’ve never seen someone lit from within” in Snow On The Beach), introduces the spirit back into the bones. This glow is tarnished, which may be because they’re forced to love in secrecy and fear, or because the two lovers still hold on to some homophobic beliefs that what they’re doing is sinful, and do it anyway, because despite it all, the glow is too grand, so much better than the cold that surrounds them.
“And the old widow goes to the stone everyday, but I don’t, I just sit here and wait, grieving for the living”
Their only company in this graveyard is the old widow, who perhaps has lost her faith too, now that the person she cared enough about to visit their grave everyday is gone. It’s also possible that she’s not visiting the grave of her husband, because it isn’t specified, and that being widowed has actually given her the freedom to visit the grave of her true love, a parallel to the two in the song. The speaker is not grieving the dead, she’s in the throes of life, waiting for her lover, grieving the situation she’s found herself in. She may be grieving herself, for she’s not truly alive when she’s not with her lover, she has no spirit in her bones. Or, if she is still clinging onto homophobic beliefs, she may be grieving the possibility of going to hell.
“Oh, goddamn, my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand, taking mine but it’s been promised to another”
The use of the word “goddamn” may just be something used by Swift to put more emphasis on this line, but it may also be the speaker’s fears of being damned by god (we later see her refer to this relationship as a magnificent curse), which was a prevalent fear in bygone eras, which it’s suggested the song takes place in, by the antique diction. The song emphasizes the pain of the narrator’s life, which is relieved by her lover’s touch, her hand, despite the cold. The hand is freezing, but not frozen, the cold is threatening to take over but does not have full control yet, kept back by the incandescent glow. It establishes that despite their relationship, the speaker is with someone else, not willingly, as is implied by the fact that it’s been promised, likely not by the speaker.
“Oh, I can’t stop you putting roots in my dreamland, my house of stone, your ivy grows, and now I’m covered in you”
It’s implied that the speaker has tried to stop this relationship, tried to stop her attraction, but her lover always finds a way back into the speaker’s mind, into her dreams, maybe into her fantasy of the future, her “dreamland”. The speaker is a house of stone, cold, barren, wintery, but her lover is ivy, growing in spite of the cold, a sign of life. Against her best efforts, her and her lover and intertwined (possibly another poetic metaphor for sex).
“I wish to know the fatal flaw that makes you long to be magnificently cursed”
The speaker doesn’t understand why her lover is willing to risk all this; she thinks of it as a fatal flaw. This may because of the the difficulty of their situation, or because she thinks there’s something wrong with their queer desires. This flaw is fatal, it may result in their deaths if they’re caught, because in certain eras, infidelity and especially queer infidelity was punishable by death. Their relationship is magnificent, but it’s a curse, too, one that may lead to them burning in hell. And yet, her lover still longs for her.
“He’s in the room, your opal eyes are all I wish to see, he wants what’s only yours”
The speaker’s husband is in the room, but he still can’t see their love, because romantic love between two women was unthinkable in many eras of history, as opposed to the more well known bogeyman of gay men. He’s in the room, but the speaker can barely bear to pretend, she wants the eyes of her lover, opal eyes—opal is a gem that under light often reflects rainbow colors. She wishes to see her lover’s eyes, but the word “wishes” implies that the want is not fulfilled, that she’s instead having to look at her husband. He wants her, and he doesn’t know that inside her dreamland, she belongs to another.
“Clover blooms in the field, spring breaks loose, the time is near, what would he do if he found us out?”
The cold winter is finally ending, homophobia is being pushed back as queer people, as spring, is breaking loose, breaking free. Other plants, less hardy than ivy, like clover (a traditionally masculine symbol, possibly representing queer men?) are flourishing, and it gives hope that the time to break free, to come out, may be near. The clover represents good luck too, good fortune for them, but then the narrator interrupts the line with her fears of her husband discovering them. The cold may have abated, but it isn’t summer yet (interesting given all the connections in Taylor’s discography between summer and queerness).
“Crescent moon, coast is clear, spring breaks loose, but so does fear, he’s gonna burn this house to the ground”
They’re in the phase of the crescent moon, the beginnings of something new after the death of the marriage, though it hasn’t been fully realized yet. They’re still sneaking around (“coast is clear”), and it repeats the themes of the previous line, through the juxtaposition of the freedom of spring and the lingering fear: the speaker fears her husband burning them to the ground. It’s unclear how threatening this would really be, though, she’s said her house is made of stone, it all depends on how deep the roots of her lover’s ivy go in her dreamland; the deeper the roots of a plant, the easier it is to regrow after fire.
“How’s one to know? I’d live and die for moments that we stole on begged and borrowed time”
As this relationship has gone on, the narrator has begun to realize, unexpectedly, that she’s willing to die for this relationship, for the stolen moments, because they’re all she’s living for, the spirit, the incandescent glow inside her. It’s a contrast between the strength of the relationship and the reality that everything they’ve built is begged and borrowed.
“So tell me to run, or dare to sit and watch what we’ve become, and drink my husband’s wine”
The speaker has transitioned in the song from fear to defiance, she embraces stealing from her husband, drinking his win, braving the risks to be together. She’s giving her lover a choice, letting her cut it off, to run—either from the relationship, or running away together—or staying and fighting, and she’s daring her lover to be brave.
“So yeah, it’s a fire, it’s a goddamn blaze in the dark, and you started it, you started it”
The bridge is a follow up to the third blaze, a response, they’ve chosen to stay and fight. The incandescent glow in the freezing cold has become a blaze in the dark, maybe it’s damned by god, but they feed it anyway. The speaker’s husband may want to burn them down, but they started the fire, they wielded what they’d been building inside themselves the whole winter long.
“So yeah, it’s war, it’s the goddamn fight of our lives, and you started it, you started it”
No longer is their relationship quietly sneaking around, bending the rules of the regime, but a revolutionary war for freedom. As Taylor said in her song Change, “The battle was long, it’s the fight of our lives, but we’ll stand up champions tonight”, “These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down”. They’re the ones in control of this fight, and eventually, they’ll win.
“Oh, I can’t stop you putting roots in my dreamland, my house of stone, your ivy grows, and now I’m covered in you, in you, now I’m covered in you, in you”
The final chorus is different from the initial one, no longer are they freezing, no longer is the speaker’s hand promised to another, the only thing left is being covered in her lover’s ivy. The roots in her dreamland were deep enough to survive the fire, and as the song ends, she repeats that she’s still covered, still covered, still covered in her lover, after the Great War.