I heard this Led Zeppelin song today and, like many songs I first encountered as a youth, it caused quite a bit of reflection. Music doesn’t just move you, the best of it also magically transports you to a different place and time.

When I was a young and foolish kid, and first heard this one, I wasn’t crazy about it. I loved Zeppelin with a passion, but like most teens I favored their heavier songs, and this one struck me as too romantic. I wrongly assumed it was about a girl.

Later, I read Hammer of the Gods and learned about how Robert Plant lost his young boy, Karac Pendragon (what a gorgeous name), and this song was his response to that unimaginable tragedy.

Had I been listening closer to the lyrics back when I was a teen, I should have known this was no typical love song:

Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time
His is the force that lies within
Ours is the fire, all the warmth we can find
He is a feather in the wind, oh

All of my love, all of my love, oh
All of my love to you

You can hear his emotion, he is almost crying the lyrics by the end. My heart breaks listening to it.

Today, as a dad myself, I listened to All My Love and realized it’s one of the greatest and most moving rock songs I have ever heard. I am amazed that Plant was able to create something this majestic in the throes of the despair he must have felt. What a tribute to his boy, and to that profound, cruel, life altering loss. I have nothing but respect for Plant as an artist and a human being. Just beautiful.