EVERY LEAF THAT TREMBLES
In a review in the latest issue of London Review of Books, though of a book published in December 2008 - Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment by William McCarthy - I found this passage quoted from one of this largely forgotten C18 poet's early poems, 'An Address to the Deity', which celebrates seeing God in everything and seeing every thing in God:
Not less the mystic characters I see
Wrought in each flower, inscrib'd in every tree;
In every leaf that trembles to the breeze
I hear the voice of GOD among the trees...
(For a close examination of Dylan's great song 'Every Grain of Sand', including some discussion of the complexities of meaning in the Biblical texts summoned by Dylan, and how Dylan's lines relate to passages by William Blake, see Chapter 12 of my Song & Dance Man III.)
Not less the mystic characters I see
Wrought in each flower, inscrib'd in every tree;
In every leaf that trembles to the breeze
I hear the voice of GOD among the trees...
(For a close examination of Dylan's great song 'Every Grain of Sand', including some discussion of the complexities of meaning in the Biblical texts summoned by Dylan, and how Dylan's lines relate to passages by William Blake, see Chapter 12 of my Song & Dance Man III.)
posted by Michael Gray | 11:49 am
1 Comments:
Ah, you made me want to listen to that great song again. I skipped over it when I was flipping through Biograph recently, looking for Carribean Wind, which Dylan said he "never got right". Some day he should release an album of variations, like a classical composer.
Seriously! One song, done ten different ways, like the bootleg for Tell Old Bill. But a great song, like "Every Grain of Sand", though the melody for that seems to have been intact before he went into the studio to record it.
I think he's so well-versed, so clever at how he weaves his sources, particularly on a song like this. It's almost like a short thesis of a certain type of humble, religious thought. He could accompany songs like this with footnotes. It only adds to the songs magnificence to read about his sources.
Thanks!
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