Ruling the waves

It would not be unfair to characterize the title track from Viva la Vida, the latest album from the band Coldplay (led by Gwyneth Paltrow's husband, Chris Martin), as pretentious claptrap, filled, as it is, with violins, church bells, resonant "ahs" — not to mention the mixed metaphors and deliberately obscured allusions of the lyrics.

While fans post their interpretations of the allusions on the Internet, one that caught my ear was "Seas would rise when I gave the word" — which recalls the story of King Canute. The 11th-century Scandinavian king who ruled over England is said, by the medieval author Henry of Huntingdon, to have set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt. When the tide failed to stop, Canute used the episode to demonstrate the limits of human power.

This message fits in very well with the overtly garbled religiosity of the song, and the story of King Canute, while not well known on these shores, is something learned by all English schoolchildren — as Chris Martin once was.