BOB DYLAN'S DREAM

(Bob Dylan - 1963)

While riding on a train goin' west,
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon,
Where we together weathered many a storm,
Laughin' and singin' till the early hours of the morn.

By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung,
Our words were told, our songs were sung,
Where we longed for nothin' and were quite satisfied
Talkin' and a-jokin' about the world outside.

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold,
We never thought we could ever get old.
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one.

As easy it was to tell black from white,
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right.
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split.

How many a year has passed and gone,
And many a gamble has been lost and won,
And many a road taken by many a friend,
And each one I've never seen again.

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
That we could sit simply in that room again.
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

 
1963

Bob Dylan's Dream is another of his songs which was transported for a time in his mind before being written down.  It was initially set off after an all-night conversation between Dylan and Oscar Brown Jr., in Greenwich Village.  "Oscar," says Dylan, "is a groovy guy and the idea of this came from what we were talking about."  The song slumbered, however, until Dylan went to England in the winter of 1962.  There he heard a singer (whose name he recalls as Martin Carthy) perform Lord Franklin, and that old melody found a new adapted home in Bob Dylan's Dream.  The song is a fond looking back at the easy camaraderie and idealism of the young when they are young.  There is also in the Dream a wry but sad requiem for the friendships that have evaporated as different routes, geographical and otherwise, are taken.