Hozier - Talk (audio) Guide

The narrator admits to using "lofty tales" and romantic imagery to mask his true, perhaps more primal, intentions.

: The audio maintains a heavy, bluesy atmosphere that matches the "underground" and "trench" imagery used throughout the lyrics. Hozier - Talk (Audio)

: Drafted lyrics and themes suggest a willingness to "tear the pages from the book of Odyssey" or frame the romance as an "old Sophocles' tragedy" just to lure the lover in. Musical Composition The narrator admits to using "lofty tales" and

or a into the mythological roots of his more recent work? Musical Composition or a into the mythological roots

: He envisions himself as various parts of this tragic myth—the voice urging Orpheus, the "dreadful need" that made him turn back, and the "immediate forgiveness" in Eurydice.

: References to The Divine Comedy appear through the "sweat of fever on the brows of Beatrice," positioning the narrator within the circles of sin before love is lost.

Hozier uses Greek and classical literature to build the song's "refined" exterior: