This little-known 1963 Bob Dylan song popped up in my iPod Shuffle recently. It’s an ecstatic nature poem, vaguely Blake-ian, and I find it most remarkable for its unlikely metaphors, each describing the passage of a day in orchestral terms.

A lesser lyricist would have given us rain for drums and a trumpet for dawn. Leave it to Dylan to dare dawn as drums, seaweed as an organ, rain as trumpet, a tree as a banjo and a river as a harp. This song was recorded for “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and but didn’t make the final cut. It was first released on the collection “Biograph” twenty-two years later, in 1985.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune
by Bob Dylan

Struck by the sounds before the sun
I knew the night had gone
The morning breeze like a bugle blew
Against the drums of dawn

The ocean wild like an organ played
The seaweed wove its strands
The crashing waves like cymbals clashed
Against the rocks and sands

I stood unwound beneath the skies
And clouds unbound by laws
The crying rain like a trumpet sang
And asked for no applause

The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love’s breast
The branches bare like a banjo played
To the winds that listened best

I gazed down in the river’s mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself beneath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum

I also like the verse that ends “and asked for no applause”, which gives the static imagery a mystical and emotional edge.

(Note: as I often do when printing song lyrics as poetry, I delay the repeating chorus until the end of the poem above. I think this helps to show lyrics like these to their best advantage when they are presented in poetic form.)