"Cedars of Lebanon" is a song by Irish rock band U2, featured as the eleventh and final track on their 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon.
The song is sung from the perspective of a war correspondent who is "squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline"[1] and who "observes "this shitty world" where the aroma of a rose "lingers and then it just goes".
[2] Additionally, the song samples "Against the Sky," a collaboration between producer Brian Eno and Harold Budd, originally featured on the 1984 album The Pearl.
In a review of the album, Jon Pareles of The New York Times characterized the song as "a somber meditation on war, separation, and enmity".
[4] The Sydney Morning Herald called the song a "masterful closer", and said that the "backing vocals, ambient noises and restraint seal a deal alongside the atmosphere of philosophical weariness.