What is the song 'Eclipse' by Pink Floyd about?

"There is no dark side of the moon..."

When Pink Floyd bassist and philosopher-poet Roger Waters uttered those now-iconic words to open "Eclipse," the final track on 1973's genre-defining "The Dark Side of the Moon," he sparked a mystery that still captivates fans decades later. What did those elusive yet evocative lyrics actually mean? As that distinctive pulse of Nick Mason's tom drums signaled the album’s foreboding climax, what message did "Eclipse" hide in its shadows?

With just 34 words spread across two haunting verses, Waters distills Floyd's monumental song cycle examining the human condition into a hypnotic chant that still feels like purposeful poetry. But the larger eclipse pink floyd meaning captured in the song remains powerfully obscure:

"All that you touch
All that you see
All you destroy
And all that you do...

All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
And everything under the sun..."

For all its brevity, "Eclipse" has sparked endless debate over its eclipse pink floyd meaning and significance as Dark Side’s philosophical punctuation mark. Is it just a trippy reverie on life and death? An ominous metaphor about madness descending? Or Waters’ rumination on mankind's fate when light dies to darkness? Like an unsolved riddle left for listeners to unpack, the eclipse pink floyd meaning seems purposefully open-ended - a puzzle as mysterious as the celestial event it’s named after.

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The Theory of Duality
Most interpretations view "Eclipse" as a treatise on the dichotomies governing existence. Its mantra-like incantation draws vivid contrasts between opposing concepts - love and hate, faith in what we save and distrust in what we steal, the creative act against utter destruction. This underscores Waters' view that humanity’s internal world is defined by extremes in perpetual tension and rotation.

In melding these disparate ideas through rhyme and repetition, "Eclipse" gives musical shape to philosophical theories about interlocking dualities underlying reality. Just as an actual solar eclipse visually aligns two spheres celestial bodies ordinarily kept apart, Waters suggests here that light and dark, beginnings and endings are more interdependent counterparts cyclically merging into form a greater whole.

Through this cosmic lens, “Eclipse” becomes Pink Floyd’s grand statement on the paradoxical symmetry binding the human experience. Short of definitively answering the questions raised across Dark Side’s sweeping exploration of time, money and mortality, Waters intimates that truth lies not in any one pole but rather in the hazy gray metaphysical space between extremes where clarity and confusion perpetually eclipse one another.

Mortality in the Shadow of Eternity
Still, more cynical ears hear “Eclipse” as Pink Floyd’s grim resignation about death’s inevitability. The song’s funereal vibe created by its dragging tempo and ominous bassline does imply darkness taking hold. And Waters makes multiple lyrical references to human impermanence and existential finality. When he sings of “All that is gone, and all that’s to come,” mortality’s stark shadow feels suddenly close at hand.

Followers of this interpretation view Waters’ poetic juxtaposition in the second verse as the true heart of “Eclipse.” The line “All that is now” gives way jarringly to “all that is gone,” underlining time’s cruel passage from being to non-being. As “the sun is eclipsed by the moon,” light and warmth are utterly extinguished, leaving only cold ashes in eclipse’s wake. Heard from this perspective, the song plays like Floyd's chilling memento mori - reminding us that beyond all life’s earthly pursuits, death waits to eclipse us all.

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A Descent into Psychedelic Dissolution
As pioneers of progressive rock’s psychedelic explosion, Pink Floyd’s music often probed altered states of consciousness. From this vantage point, some fans theorize “Eclipse” stages the experience of a psychedelic trip turning nightmarish. The opening reference to “everything under the sun...in tune” evokes the cosmic unity of a blissful high. But as “the sun is eclipsed by the moon,” the sensation curdles, overwhelmed by darkness visible.

Eclipse’s signature heartbeat bassline adds to this atmosphere of madness and fear replacing mystical revelation. The disjointed chant also seems to mimic a schizophrenic mind buckling as an orderly sense of reality becomes fractured. When Waters wrote these lyrics in 1973, Floyd’s hallucinogenic journey was still deeply interwoven with their musical visions.