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MetalliNote
Lord Foul's Bane
Many Metallica songs borrow from literature, and To Live Is To Die is no exception.
Take the following line:
- These are the pale deaths which
Men miscall their lives
This is actually derived, word for word and nearly line by line, from a work of fiction called Lord Foul's Bane. Written by Stephen R. Donaldson, it is the first in "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever."
In the book, the main character Covenant decides "he should write a poem." He does so, in his head, and the results are the following verses:
- These are the pale deaths
which men miscall their lives:
for all the scents of green things growing,
each breath is but an exhalation of the grave.
Bodies jerk like puppet corpses,
and hell walks laughing--
It has been said that Cliff Burton was a fan of Donaldson and Lord Foul's Bane, so the song To Live Is To Die is seen as a tribute to Burton.