Ed Sheeran’s ‘Afterglow’ is Poetic Genius!
Just when I was thinking that 2020 had gone by without an Ed Sheeran song, he comes up with yet another heart-warming masterpiece in the cold winter of December.
Ed Sheeran’s ability to convey complex emotions and profound thoughts is seen in his use of imagery and pithy sentences. The very title of the song is enough to reveal its depth. The word ‘Afterglow’ refers to the dying light of the day usually seen around sunset or one could also picture it as the fading embers seen when the fire goes out. This refers to the undying love between two people even when the end is near.
From the very beginning the song captures this unreal, unearthly sense of love that is often seen as impossible but let me tell you that reality can sometimes be an illusion. In fact, the song talks of a “new dimension” where the clock has come to a halt and all that is to be known between the two lovers is that they simply exist in this world “all alone”. The irony here is that they are not alone since they have each other to cling on to as the world and all its disturbances have faded away magically from sight. A serene sense of peace envelops the atmosphere around the two lovers as the speaker sees the reflection of his eyes in his beloved’s gaze. Sheeran is metaphorically saying that when two people in love come together they form one single entity. This reminds me of a line from the Metaphysical poet John Donne’s poem ‘The Good-Morrow’ where the speaker says -
“My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest”.
Multiple sense perceptions are evoked in this song through the minimal use of words. All it takes is just a one-liner for Sheeran to deliver a sensory and soulful experience. The opening verse attributes a human quality (dancing) to the golden rays of light that are emitted from the sun as they fall on the beloved’s hair giving it a paradisiacal look. The rendering of the “million colours of hazel, golden, and red” makes one feel the soothing warmth of the sun as the tactile sense is evoked along with the sense of sight coming from the two reflections in the first verse — the beloved’s eyes act as a mirror reflecting the lover’s eyes and the coffee mug reflecting the sun’s rays as it bounces off the polished surface. In the second verse we see the use of sense imagery being carried forward with the introduction of the third sense perception i.e., auditory imagery. It is interesting to note that Sheeran refers to the radio playing (auditory) Iron and Wine (stage name of the American artist Samuel Ervin Beam) only when winter has arrived. He could be referring to the song ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ which can be interpreted as the failure of love. The speaker of the song goes in search of his love but in the end he figures out that the bird cannot fly any longer as it is left “grounded” and “bleeding”. The speaker could be referring to someone he once loved but he never explicitly states the circumstances that led to the wings of the bird being clipped. Coming back to Sheeran’s song, he goes on to use one line which beautifully conveys the arrival of winter -“leaves are buried under six inches of white”. From feeling the warmth of the morning sun in the first verse, we now begin to feel the cold as the “weather outside” changes. This whole part could refer to the cold (literally and metaphorically) that has engulfed the land as winter has arrived. The sense of sadness and loss in the Iron and Wine song coupled with the image of the dead leaves buried under the winter snow spells decay and approaching death but Sheeran introduces a volta which contrasts this coldness to the warmth of the world of the speaker and his beloved as seen in the first verse of ‘Afterglow’. The contrast is brought about in the chorus which is resolute in tone as the speaker resolves to hold on to the dying embers of his love by never letting go. There is a tremendous amount of energy that is generated in the chorus as the lover roars saying that he “won’t be silent” thus fighting against the onset of decay which is immutable.
The musical notes of the first verse start off in a soothing and serene manner generating a sense of calm but as we move on to the second verse which talks of the fight that the speaker puts up against the cold elements we notice the perennial flow of those high frequency ghostly notes echoing in the background as we witness a transition to the hard and energetic strumming of the acoustic guitar which when combined with Sheeran’s soul stretching falsetto goes on to aptly convey that feeling when one obstinately puts up a fight against the inevitable.
No fire can burn forever and at some point light must give way to darkness but our speaker is putting up a fight and in this fight he promises to never let the remaining embers die out even if the light of day gives way to darkness. The song ends with the refrain “oh, I will hold on to the afterglow” and this can only mean one thing: If the embers continue to burn till “the darkness softly clears”, Sheeran could be talking of an eternal kind of love which will remain even after death. Firstly, he could be referring to the eternalization of the love they share in this work of art i.e., the song (which will never die) and secondly he could be hinting at the probability of this love stretching into the after-life as seen in the imagery of darkness giving way to the birth of day as the cycle goes on.
I will conclude by saying that human beings are mortal but love can indeed be eternal. If you think otherwise, I will encourage you to read William Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 18’ where he establishes the immortality of love as he says -
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”.
