I'm a melancholy man, that's what I am, All the world surrounds me, and my feet are on the ground. I'm a very lonely man, doing what I can, All the world astounds me and I think I understand That we're going to keep growing, wait and see.
When all the stars are falling down Into the sea and on the ground, And angry voices carry on the wind, A beam of light will fill your head And you'll remember what's been said By all the good men this world's ever known. Another man is what you'll see, Who looks like you and looks like me, And yet somehow he will not feel the same, His life caught up in misery, he doesn't think like you and me, 'Cause he can't see what you and I can see.
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down And I do appreciate you being 'round Help me get my feet back on the ground Won't you please, please help me -Lennon/McCartney
Someday I hope you get the chance To live like you were dying Like tomorrow was a gift And you've got eternity To think about What you'd do with it What could you do with it What did I do with it? What would I do with it? -Tim McGraw
Come gather 'round, people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone If your time to you is worth savin' And you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'
Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin' For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'
Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled The battle outside ragin' Will soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'
Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don't criticize What you can't understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin' Please get out of the new one If you can't lend your hand For the times they are a-changin'
The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is rapidly fadin' And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'
Thirty years ago, during my second year of teaching humanities at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts (1985-86, I created an elective two-semester course called "Lyric" that began with ancient Greek poetry and ended with modern song lyrics, from Broadway musicals to folk-rock. ... While Joan Baez has unfailingly impressed, her colleague and sometime flame Bob Dylan has not. To my dismay, Dylan was a very hard sell in my classes throughout the 1980s. His voice struck many students as thin and grating, while the hyper-verbalism and attack style of his protest songs seemed out of sync. That thankfully changed in the 1990s, probably because of aggressively political rap, which had become hugely popular among white male teenagers trapped in the blandness and materialism of suburban shopping-mall culture. Dylan's message-heavy intensity seemed relevant again, a recovered stature happily sustained in the new century.
Joan Baez.................................................................Silver Dagger
Don't sing love songs, you'll wake my mother She's sleeping here right by my side And in her right hand a silver dagger She says that I can't be your bride
"All men are false", says my mother "They'll tell you wicked, lovin' lies The very next evening, they'll court another Leave you alone to pine and sigh"
My daddy is a handsome devil He's got a chain five miles long And on every link a heart does dangle Of another maid he's loved and wronged
Go court another tender maiden And hope that she will be your wife For I've been warned, and I've decided
To sleep alone all of my life
Bob Dylan.................................................Desolation Row
They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row
Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one, " she smiles And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe" And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave" And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row
Now the moon is almost hidden, the stars are beginning to hide The fortune telling lady has even taken all her things inside All except for Cain and Abel and the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love or else expecting rain And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row
Ophelia, she's 'neath the window for her I feel so afraid On her twenty-second birthday she already is an old maid To her, death is quite romantic she wears an iron vest Her profession's her religion, her sin is her lifelessness And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette And he when off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet You would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup But all his sexless patients, they're trying to blow it up Now his nurse, some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole And she also keeps the cards that read, "Have Mercy on His Soul" They all play on the penny whistles, you can hear them blow If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row
Across the street they've nailed the curtains, they're getting ready for the feast The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest They are spoon feeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know" Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row"
At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row
Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn Everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?!" And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row
Yes, I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke All these people that you mention, yes, I know them, they're quite lame I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row
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