Dry Your Eyes, Mate

In one single moment your whole life can turn 'round

I stand there for a minute starin' straight into the ground

Lookin' to the left slightly, then lookin' back down

World feels like it's caved in - proper sorry frown

Please let me show you where we could only just be, for us

I can change and I can grow or we could adjust

The wicked thing about us is we always have trust

We can even have an open relationship, ...

I'm not gonna fuckin', just fuckin' leave it all now

'Cause you said it'd be forever and that was your vow

And you're gonna let our things simply crash and fall down

You're well out of order now, this is well out of town

Dry your eyes mate

I know it's hard to take but her mind has been made up

There's plenty more fish in the sea

Dry your eyes mate

I know you want to make her see how much this pain hurts

But you've got to walk away now

I wonder if what resonates about this song is that the narrator has a proper conception of marriage--as something that is inviolable and lasting until death. The tragedy of the song is that the society does not support the narrator's true understanding of marriage. Rather, the society tells him to give up, to move on, to walk away, using an appropriate animal metaphor. For if marriage is not a substantial thing with its existence outside of a contract, then we are, in fact, like animals. This song shows the death of love and marriage. It purports to offer a sort of hope in exchange ("There's plenty more fish in the sea"), but this is not hope--it is hope of physical satisfaction, but not of emotional completion. There is something in the song's melody that is properly mournful, supporting the narrator's loss of his love and the society's loss of stability.