LAY DOWN YOUR WEARY TUNE: NO VOICE CAN HOPE TO HUM…
…I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things…
William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, 1798
…A something in a summer’s day,
As slow her flambeaux burn away,
Which solemnizes me.
A something in a summer’s noon, —
An azure depth, a wordless tune,
Transcending ecstasy…
Emily Dickinson, Psalm of the Day, 1896
Bob Dylan first wrote and recorded Lay Down Your Weary Tune in late 1963. The song was originally scheduled to appear on The Times They Are A-Changin’ album but was replaced by Restless Farewell. A live recording at Carnegie Hall was also intended for release on the aborted Bob Dylan in Concert album. It took until 1965, with the release of Biograph, for Dylan’s version to appear. Until then the best known recording had been by The Byrds on their album Turn, Turn, Turn (1966). In delivering the haunting and uplifting ‘sing along chorus’ the vocal trio of Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark do great justice to the song.
Lay Down….
It was also performed live by the early ‘folky’ incarnations of Jefferson Airplane and Fairport Convention. Other memorable, but rather harder edged readings exist by the Martin Carthy incarnation of Steeleye Span and Billy Bragg. But in Dylan’s solo acoustic renditions, sentiments and imagery which could come over as somewhat corny or maudlin are presented in stark contrast to his sonorous delivery. This gives the song a tone of ambiguity and a richness which the other artists cannot come close to.
The song stands in great contrast to most of the material Dylan was writing at this point in his career. Neither a political diatribe like Masters of War nor a ‘song of parting’ like Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, it took him into new territory. Inspired by a number of Scottish nature ballads which Dylan has covered at various points in his career – such as Wild Mountain Thyme and (especially) The Water is Wide (whose melody it partly appropriates) – in many ways it also anticipates the nature mysticism of Mr. Tambourine Man (written a few months later). In both songs, the narrator appears to have been awake all night and is experiencing the beauties of a new dawn. Both have inevitably been linked to the transcendental revelations that are often associated with the psychedelic experience.
The chorus: …Lay down your weary tune/ Lay down the song you strum/ And rest yourself ‘neath the strength of strings/ No voice can hope to hum…, which unusually for Dylan appears at the beginning of the song, is also featured after each of the six verses. It is unusual for Dylan to place so much emphasis on a chorus, especially one which implores the listener to follow his lead. This indicates the song’s status as a ‘secular hymn’.
Lay Down
The chorus may have been inspired by I Heard the Voice of Jesus, a nineteenth century ‘song of praise’, also of Scottish origin and written by Horatius Bonar, which includes the lyric … Lay down, thou weary one, lay down/ Thy head upon my breast… Dylan’s chorus uses the musical imagery on which the entirety of Lay Down is based, identifying music as a spiritually uplifting force. In terms of Dylan’s own development as an artist, the reference to ‘weariness’ in the refrain and the desire to ‘lay down’ suggests that the era of him writing explicitly political songs is now coming to a close. The implied imperative tone in the chorus, particularly the reference to…the song you strum… also suggests that Dylan may be singing to himself as much as to an imagined audience.
By this point in his career, Dylan was certainly ‘weary’ of being categorised as a political figurehead when his main inclination was towards being a poet and a musician. A number of his previous ‘songs of social consciousness’ like Blowin’ in the Wind, When the Ship Comes In and The Times They Are A-Changin’ had also demonstrated a certain hymnal quality but one might speculate that he may have been wary of ending the Times album on such an anthemic note. Restless Farewell , which arguably also attempts to draw a line under his career as a protest singer, is in contrast a far more personal ‘soul baring’ song which avoids giving any ‘instructions’ to the listener.
Despite such considerations, it is arguably a great pity that Dylan’s rendition of Lay Down did not see the light of day for so long, as it is one of the most fully realised of his early compositions and one in which his poetic inclinations and ambitions were so clearly displayed. The lyrics demonstrate the influence of Romantic nature poetry, particularly that of Wordsworth and Blake, as well as that of American nature poets such as Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Dylan also utilises some elements of the archaic diction which he would later revisit on albums such as John Wesley Harding. Each verse uses similes to compare various musical instruments to the beauties of and the spiritual nourishment that nature can, in the Romantic world view, provide. Thus it would not be inaccurate to describe Lay Down as a ‘religious’ song, although it is not tied to any specific creed.
Dylan’s poetry is, of course, highly musical and is meant to be sung. In the verses, which are anchored by simple, regular rhymes, he makes much use of the ‘sound device’ of alliteration to create emphasise a devotion to the ‘music’ he hears in nature. The first verse begins with the highly striking line …Struck by the sounds before the sun… The opening word ‘struck’ compares the revelation he is now experiencing to being hit by lightning. The phrase ‘before the sun’ and the following …I knew the night had gone… reveal that both a physical and a spiritual ‘dawn’ is coming. In more lines rich with alliteration we hear that …The morning breeze like a bugle blew/ Against the drums of dawn… To the narrator, the winds that now arise are ‘blowing away’ his previous state of consciousness. He likens them to the sound of a bugle, which in military tradition is blown at sunrise or at the beginning of a battle. Although he has presumably had a sleepless night, this ‘bugle’ signals a new awakening in him. This is followed by the unusual juxtaposition of words in ‘the drums of dawn’ which also has the connotation of a battle about to be fought – in this case a battle to achieve a newly awakened consciousness.
The narrator now stands awestruck as the new light reveals the beauty and power of nature. In his vision, the natural elements are personified as being alive. We hear that …The ocean wild like an organ played/ The seaweed wove its strands… The next lines …The crashing. waves like cymbals clashed / Against the rocks and sand… are especially visceral, with Dylan’s diction imitating the musical sounds themselves. In perhaps the song’s most personal lines, he declares that …I stood unwound beneath the skies/ And clouds unbound by laws… clearly indicating that what he is experiencing is affecting him in a deeply personal way, liberating him from his preconceptions. This is followed by a depiction of nature as if it is staging an actual musical performance: …The crying rain like a trumpet sang/ And asked for no applause…
In the last two verses the tone changes somewhat, as a number of portents are hinted at. Suddenly we appear to be in an autumnal setting as …The last of leaves fell from the trees/ And clung to a new love’s breast… The mention of the ‘crying rain’ in the previous verse had already alerted us to this new emphasis. It seems that it is the enraptured narrator himself who has experienced this ‘new love’. But already nature is revealing her destructive side. The narrator may well also be crying, with the realisation that this wonderful dawn will not last forever.
Now we hear another wailing, lamenting voice as …The branches bare like a banjo moaned/ To the winds that listened the best… The banjo was the instrument on which the blues was first played. Now the trees themselves are ‘moaning’ as nature goes through its inevitable cycle. The narrator is experiencing a second revelation as he ‘comes down’ from his earlier ecstatic experience. In contrast to the fresh morning ‘breezes’, the winds of nature are predicting the inevitable coming of winter.
The narrator will not, however, take us that far. He takes a metaphorical step back. Having experienced the wonders of nature and its darker, more cyclical, nature he is now content to stand in contemplation of the scene. He tells us that …I gazed down into the river’s mirror/ And watched its winding strum… The musical metaphor ‘strum’, which is repeated in the chorus, now reappears, partly as a pun on ‘stream’ (‘winding stream’ being a common phrase) and partly as a personification of the river’s natural ability to keep on flowing, just as a guitarist will ‘keep on strumming’ throughout a song.
The final lines …The water smooth ran like a hymn/ And like a harp did hum… make the spiritual nature of the experience described in the song explicit. The river water is transformed into a hymn to the natural world rather than to some disembodied deity. The reference to a ‘harp’ makes the connection between the experience of nature, in all its wonder and ‘fearful symmetry’, and the idea of heaven quite explicit. But this ‘heaven’ is not in some distant abstract space ‘above’. It has been revealed to exist in the here and now.
Lay Down Your Weary Tune can thus be described as a ‘hymn to the universe’ in which Dylan recognises that the kind of revelation it describes can be both a joyful experience which enriches all the senses and a creative inspiration. But he also tacitly acknowledges that the river at the end of the song will keep on flowing, long after the singer and his audience have departed from ‘this mortal coil’.
Therefore any moments of visionary ecstasy that we may experience must be treasured. In other words, we must live in the moment, as we will not live forever. But the transcendent experience that the song portrays is not that of a ‘Disneyfied’ reality where there will always be a ‘happy ending’. It is that of real life. Just as the spiritual seeker is given a glimpse into eternity, so he also realises that all things (including himself) must die so that the cycle of nature can continue its process of endless renewal.
LINKS
STILL ON THE ROAD – ALL DYLAN’S GIGS
THE CAMBRIDGE BOB DYLAN SOCIETY
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