You are allowed to post more than once. Please, let 'er rip!
Something more recent (from Thunder on the Mountain):
Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches
I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages
I been to St. Herman’s church, said my religious vows
I’ve sucked the milk out of a thousand cows
From the vastly underrated Street Legal LP, from We Better Talk This Over:
I guess I’ll be leaving tomorrow
If I have to beg, steal or borrow.
It’d be great to cross paths in a day and a half
Look at each other and laugh.
But I don’t think it’s liable to happen
Like the sound of one hand clappin’.
The vows that we kept are now broken and swept
'Neath the bed where we slept.
Don’t think of me and fantasize on what we never had,
Be grateful for what we’ve shared together and be glad.
Kept, swept, and slept are great rhymes, but they don’t seem forced in any way but instead sum up the failed relationship perfectly.
I wouldn’t be able to choose a single favorite Dylan lyric. But this one’s rather special to me because this was my introduction to Dylan.
I was still in my early teens, I’m guessing this was maybe 1967, and I’d heard of Dylan, and I’d heard covers of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” but I’d never actually heard any recordings of Dylan. And I was familiar with the Byrds’ cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which I loved, and didn’t even realize was a cover.
Then for some reason one evening with nobody else around, I turn on the radio, which my older sister must’ve left on WHFS (anyone who grew up in the DC area back then will know what I mean), and it was in the middle of this song, and I just listened in amazement to those lyrics.
“Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time…” That’s my earliest memory of Dylan.
From Visions of Johanna:
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes everything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
I love how the lyrics in this song wind up the hill, to this stark series with it’s wonderful imagery, and the bare, rupturing, and resigned ending.
My favorite opening lyric is from “She Belongs to Me.” In two lines Dylan tells us everything we need to know about this girl:
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
I wish for just one moment you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you.
Yes, I wish that for just one moment, you could stand inside my shoes.
You’d know what a drag it is to see you.
Love this too, and the way it’s performed in the Albert Hall CD I think is much better than the Blonde on Blonde studio cut.
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue is probably my favorite song of all time.
The last verse is so very evocative. It’s one of the few songs that actually makes me tear up.
Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start a new
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.
I selected the “Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind” stanza, and am pleased to see that four before me did also. But there are lots of great verses. Nearly fifty years ago I had several of his songs memorized and would sing them to myself when I was bored.
So many great songs and verses! I’ll just mention “Blowing in the Wind,” so famous by now as to seem mundane, … but Bob Dylan was the songwriter.
“Positively 4th St.” is the very first Dylan song I have a distinct memory of hearing on the radio.
So much to post, so much…
Highway 61:
Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”
Love Minus Zero/No Limit:
My love she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful
Yet she’s true, like ice, like fire
People carry roses
Make promises by the hours
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her
Subterranean Homesick Blues:
Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D.A.
Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tiptoes
Don’t try “No-Doz”
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows
Chimes Of Freedom:
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
[…]
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
[…]
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
And everything posted so far, especially the whole of Mr. Tambourine Man, which is a flawless masterpiece.
And of course my sig ;).
Since I had kids, this one always chokes me up.
May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
The first stanza perfectly sets the mood for the whole song:
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
And just like BobLibDem, I prefer the Albert Hall (yeah, Manchester Free Trade Hall ;)) version (though the studio version is flawless, mind you). The dreamy, druggy/sedated performance perfectly matches the nocturnal air of the song. Listen how he phrases: “But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues you can tell by the way she smiles”. It’s a blast.
And he just smoked my eyelids, and punched my cigarette.
um…will somebody please tell me what this means?
Yeah,it sorta sounds like it’s some deep stuff,man.
And, -wow–it mentions God! And in a folk song,not a country song!..so, hey,ya know, it must be serious.And it uses the word highway, so it’s gotta be saying something from deep in the American psyche.
But I just don’t get it. At all.
This is worthy of a Nobel prize?
What am I missing?
I was going to quote a verse from that song, but I was having too much trouble deciding which verse!
*But he cursed me when I proved it to him
Then I whispered, “Not even you can hide
You see, you’re just like me
I hope you’re satisfied”
*
An’ I say, “Aw come on now
You must know about my debutante”
An’ she says, “Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want”
“The pump don’t work, cuz the vandals took the handles.” 
From “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”, which is an extremely dark dirge about desperation:
And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I’ll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.
I’m too lazy to explain so here’s a quote from an article I read earlier in the day:
From here: Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan Is A Literary 'Alchemist' : NPR
ETA: the chuzpe alone to transfer this crucial Biblical story into mid-sixties Dylan-jive is worth the price of admission.
I am not even remotely religious, but that last stanza of “Every Grain of Sand” is about as good as it gets.
“I’m gonna start my pickin’ right now, just tell me where you’ll be.”
Judas pointed down the road, and said, “Eternity.”
“Eternity?” said Frankie Lee, with a voice as cold as ice
“Yes, that’s right,” said Judas Priest, “Eternity, though you might call it Paradise.”
“I don’t call it anything,” said Frankie Lee with a smile.
“All right,” said Judas Priest, “I’ll see you after a while.”