Furthermore, “Made of silver or of golden” may be coloured with ore, and may be heading for Barcelona, a gold bar.
432 Something similar is achieved in the lines from Farewell quoted on see this page: “I’m bound off for the bay of Mexico / Or maybe the coast of Californ” – where California, being lopped of its last two letters, becomes a masculine ending: “Californ”.
433 He sings “thoughts are”; as printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “heart is”.
434 See this page.
435 What is printed in Lyrics 1962–1985 has much less sense of an exact fit: “The same thing I want from you today, / I would want again tomorrow”.
436 Same rhyme, different reason, at the end of Oh Sister: “Oh, sister, when I come to knock at your door / Don’t turn away, you’ll create sorrow / Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore / You may not see me tomorrow”. I for one have the distinct impression that she will see him tomorrow, given how “tomorrow” follows so equably from “sorrow”; does it sound as though there may really be rupture? Time is an ocean but at least it isn’t that lonesome ocean.
437 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “wind”.
438 Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. He’ll be the Judge of that.
439 OED, “ask”, 4c.
440 Philosophical Papers (1961, 1979 edition), see this page.
441 Fletcher, The Bloody Brother (1625); both this and “heaven in a string” are in the OED, 1a, under “string”.
442 When He Returns: “The iron hand it ain’t no match for the iron rod” – or for the velvet glove (which is not a matching glove).
443 The end of Up to Me has affinities with this: “And the harmonica around my neck, I blew it for you, free / No one else could play that tune / You know it was up to me”. What Was It You Wanted? cannot bring itself to offer her the words of responsibility, Up to You.
444 Six participles spread through the first six verses, and then there is the intensification of this insistence with five of them in this last verse.
445 Lyrics 1962–1985, see this page.
446 T. S. Eliot, Johnson as Critic and Poet (1944); On Poetry and Poets (1957), see this page.
447 Playboy (March 1978).
448 “But evermore a life behind”, even in the afterlife. In Memoriam XLI:
A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
That I shall be thy mate no more,
Though following with an upward mind
The wonders that have come to thee,
Through all the secular to-be,
But evermore a life behind.
In Memoriam, VII, mourning this same lost love, has a few affinities with One Too Many Mornings, in the street, the dark, the door, and the morning. Probably coincidences only (though Dylan has mentioned Tennyson), but such analogues can remind us that great upward minds think alike.
449 I draw on my book Tennyson (second edition 1989), pp. 133–4.
450 See this page on rhyme.
451 To be found, for instance, in The Faber Book of Ballads, ed. Matthew Hodgart (1965).
452 Song and Dance Man III (2000), see this page.
453 At King Alfred’s School, Wantage, in my days (1942–1951), there were hardly any level playing-fields, but we knew that we would be changing ends at half-time. Not to worry. To take into account, though.
454 The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks (1987), vol. I, see this page.
455 10 September 1864, to A. W. M. Baillie; Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. C. C. Abbott (1956 edition), see this page.
456 Dylan’s report of what it is like to fall short of inspiration is attached to Caribbean Wind (which was previously unreleased) on Biograph:
“That one I couldn’t quite grasp what it was about after I finished it,” said Dylan. “Some times you’ll write something to be very inspired, and you won’t quite finish it for one reason or another. Then you’ll go back and try and pick it up, and the inspiration is just gone. Either you get it all, and you can leave a few little pieces to fill in, or you’re trying always to finish it off. Then it’s a struggle. The inspiration’s gone and you can’t remember why you started it in the first place. Frustration sets in. I think there’s four different sets of lyrics to this, maybe I got it right, I don’t know. I had to leave it. I just dropped it. Sometimes that happens.”
457 Literary principles as against theory (1985); Essays in Appreciation (1996), see this page.
458 This critical term, to place (to set within a context that makes such judgements possible), is from Henry James, himself a master of love-lorn streetscapes and of the sadly human propensity to self-absorption.
459 Richard Steele, The Tatler, No. 5 (1709).
460 OED, 2c.
461 One More Weekend: “We’ll go someplace unknown / Leave all the children home / Honey, why not go alone / Just you and me”.
462 Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (songbird par excellence): “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, / Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, / But in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet / Wherewith the seasonable month endows / The grass”.
463 Amos 9:5: “And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt.” 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also.”
464 OED, 2b: U.S. slang with American English (1869), “Among names of revolvers I remember . . . Black-eyed Susan”, and Americanisms (1888), “Texan for a revolver”.
465 And, elsewhere in Dylan, with seasonal change that is sadder than in Moonlight (where “The seasons they are turnin’”). Idiot Wind: “I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned / Slowly into autumn”.
466 Of some punning lines in The Merchant of Venice (V, i), Dr Johnson wrote: “There is scarcely any word with which Shakespeare so much delights to trifle as with ‘light’, in its various significations.” Again, of Antony and Cleopatra (I, iv), “The word ‘light’ is one of Shakespeare’s favourite play-things.”
467 Numbers 6:24.
468 Absolutely imperative (given the absence of a comma before “people”), the apostrophe in “’round”. [Square people, stay right where you are.]
469 Dylan: “‘Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.’ That scares the shit out of people” (Biograph).
470 As against, and perhaps actively against, the other sense of do for: “To ruin, damage, or injure fatally, destroy, wear out entirely”.
471 Tindale’s translation (1526). In the King James Bible: “And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye?”
472 Biograph. “Tucson” / “one of my boys”. (Not that he has only two sons.) Like God, words and pronunciation move in a mysterious way. “I certainly didn’t intend . . .”
473 C. S. Calverley mockingly apprehended what had happened when “for ever” became “forever”:
Forever; ’tis a single word!
Our rude forefathers deemed it two:
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?
Forever! What abysms of woe
The word reveals, what frenzy, what
Despair! For ever (printed so)
Did not.
Calverley lauds the innovator:
But in men’s hearts shall be thy throne,
While the great pulse of England beats.
Thou coiner of a word unknown
To Keats!
474 11 Outlined Epitaphs: “above the bells of William Blake” (Lyrics 1962–1985, 1985, see this page).
475 In our world, this would need to be “I need! I need!”, as in the child’s cry “Need candy!”
476 William Blake’s Writings, ed. G. E. Bentley, Jr (1978), vol. I, see this page.
477 Rolling Stone (22 November 2001).
478 Angelina. The previous instances are from Sign Language, Handy Dandy, and Neighborh
ood Bully.
479 Richard III, V, ii.
480 George Herbert, Discipline.
481 Wilfred Mellers reviewed Planet Waves (New Statesman, 8 March 1974):
The first version is as guileless as a white gospel song, though its “gift to be simple” doesn’t preclude subtlety: consider the reverberation of Dylan’s voice at the end of the stanzas, or his unexpected speaking of the words about the surrounding light. The second version of the song apparently debunks the first, banishing hymnic innocence with fast, parodistic country rock; yet even the parody is heart-felt, the first version is not discredited.
482 For melisma, see this page.
483 “Whose mind is stayed on thee”. Whose mind? There are moments when the two are of one mind: “song be sung” / “song always be sung”; “have a strong city; salvation” / “have a strong foundation”; “the truth may” / “May you always know the truth”; “stayed” / “stay”. These, and God, righteous, keep, for ever.
484 Rhyming with “Capture your soul and hold it for ransom”. The handsome / ransom rhyme had tickled Byron (Don Juan, II, v, st. 9), but closer by is Bruce Springsteen: “So you fell for some jerk who was tall, dark and handsome, / Then he kidnapped your heart and now he’s holding it for ransom. / Well, like a mission impossible I’m gonna go and get it back. / You know I would’a taken better care of it, baby, than that” (I’m a Rocker). The printed version in Lyrics 1962–1985 (1985) had been, not “Capture your soul”, but “Capture your heart”. At first he gave us “your heart” but he wanted “your soul”.
485 See this page, on faith.
486 Dylan’s song on the soundtrack of Gods and Generals (2003).
487 Emily Dickinson: “It was not Death, for I stood up, / And all the Dead, lie down – / It was not Night, for all the Bells / Put out their Tongues, for Noon”. A. E. Housman: “When the bells justle in the tower / The hollow night amid, / Then on my tongue the taste is sour / Of all I ever did”.
488 Playboy (March 1978).
489 If this miracle is in the hinterland of Dylan’s words there, the link might be that the verses of 1 Corinthians immediately preceding the great chapter 13 on charity ask: “are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues?”
490 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985,“stupid”, which is uncharitable in comparison with “fool-ish”. 1 Corinthians 1:20: “hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”
491 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “no claims”; he sings “no false claims”.
492 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “won’t mess up your day”, which was too close to the condescending sarcasm of the bumper-sticker that told people (other people, natch) that one nuclear bomb could ruin your whole day. The smug bares its gums.
493 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “ain’t no accident”. The secure swiftness, rhythmical and syntactical, that cuts from the one to the other, not needing even the verb “to be”, “Love’s that pure, no accident”, is paralleled elsewhere in the song, when Dylan – who had printed “Will not deceive you or lead you to transgression” – sings “Will not deceive you, lead you into transgression”. Confident at the wheel.
494 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “Never needs to be proud, restlessly yearning”. The praise of “love that’s pure” in “Never needs to be proud, loud” recalls St Paul: “charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly”.
495 Rolling Stone (15 October 1981).
496 Belacqua, in A Wet Night (More Pricks than Kicks, 1934).
497 I draw on an essay of mine on Loneliness and Poetry (Allusion to the Poets, 2002).
498 Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan (1971, revised edition 1973), see this page.
499 Quoted in Scaduto, Bob Dylan, see this page.
500 The sleeve-notes to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
501 Interview with Dave Fanning, Irish Times Magazine (29 September 2001).
502 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “sang”, but he sings “sung”. See T. S. Eliot on Tennyson, see this page.
503 Irish Times Magazine (29 September 2001).
504 Newsweek (6 October 1997).
505 Interview with Serge Kaganski, Mojo (February 1998).
506 Liner-notes to The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964); Lyrics 1962–1985, see this page.
507 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, “stayed”; some of us think that he sings at least a suggestion of “stared”, which would go with everything that we hear about eyes in the song, including “She called with her eyes / To the tune I’s a-playin’” and “That of all the eyes out there / I could see none”. The first four verses each mention eyes, hers and his and others’; if we look for “eyes” in the last verse, we find “Then looked for the girl / Who’d stayed for so long”, which picks up – at some distance – “With a long-distance look / Her eyes was on fire”. Like all those eyes, she did not stay till the final end.
508 Spenser, Hymn to Heavenly Beauty: “I feel my wits to fail, and tongue to fold”. Dylan: “The fast fading words / That rolled from my tongue”, “As the tune finally folded”.
509 Berryman, Dream Song number 45. Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, jacket-notes; Lyrics 1962–1985, see this page.
510 I draw on an essay of mine on American English and the inherently transitory (The Force of Poetry, 1984).
511 OED has the noun “pierce” as rare, from 1613, with Keats, Isabella, XXXIV: “Like a lance, / Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall / With cruel pierce”.
512 The car is heard in Robert Lowell’s poem Grandparents, in Life Studies (1959): “the Pierce Arrow clears its throat in a horse-stall”. Lowell, with whose art Dylan’s has affinities (including these contrarious puns or anti-puns), said in conversation: “Dylan is alloy; he is true folk and fake folk, and has the Caruso voice. He has lines, but I doubt if he has written whole poems. He leans on the crutch of his guitar” (to Gabriel Pearson, the Review, summer 1971).
513 Sleeve-notes to Peter, Paul and Mary, In the Wind (1963); Bob Dylan in His Own Write, compiled by John Tuttle, see this page.
514 Interview, London (4 October 1997); Isis (October 1997).
515 Rolling Stone (16 November 1978).
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