All This and Heaven Too

Track 11 on Ceremonials (Deluxe Version)

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“All This and Heaven Too” is the final gasp of an uplifting soundscape found in Ceremonials, since it preceeds the somber ending that is “Leave My Body”. Despite having a… Read More

Oct. 28, 20111 viewer52.9K views

All This and Heaven Too Lyrics

[Verse 1]
And the heart is hard to translate
It has a language of its own
It talks in tongues and quiet sighs
In prayers and proclamations
In the grand deeds of great men and the smallest of gestures
In short shallow gasps

[Pre-Chorus]
But with all my education I can't seem to command it
And the words are all escaping, and coming back all damaged
And I would put them back in poetry if I only knew how
I can't seem to understand it

[Chorus]
And I would give all this and heaven too
I would give it all if only for a moment
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see
'Cause I've been scrawling it forever but it never makes sense to me at all

[Verse 2]
And it talks to me in tiptoes
And it sings to me inside
It cries out in the darkest night and breaks in the morning light

[Pre-Chorus]
But with all my education I can't seem to command it
And the words are all escaping, and coming back all damaged
And I would put them back in poetry if I only knew how
I can't seem to understand it

[Chorus]
And I would give all this and heaven too
I would give it all if only for a moment
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see
'Cause I've been scrawling it forever but it never makes sense to me at all

[Chorus]
And I would give all this and heaven too
I would give it all if only for a moment
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see
'Cause I've been scrawling it forever, but it never makes sense to me at all

[Outro]
No words
Poor language
It doesn't deserve such treatment
And all my stumbling phrases never amounted
To anything worth this feeling
All this heaven never could describe such a feeling as I'm hearing
Words were never so useful
So I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before

About

“All This and Heaven Too” is the final gasp of an uplifting soundscape found in Ceremonials, since it preceeds the somber ending that is “Leave My Body”. Despite having a slightly cheerful instrumental, the lyrics find Florence Welch struggling to communicate, making a metalinguistic construction while singing words about words.

In a track-by-track interview, she commented on it:

I feel like love for me just feels like one long note, like, one long scream, a noise; and to try to put that into a word can be so hard. It’s like something that it’s inside, to try and compose that into just some sort of poetry I think it’s so hard. I’m always stumbling over what to say or how to explain things, so I think that song is definitely about how it can be so confusing to have to express that feeling.