1)
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
The song is based on a woman who went best schools, having a good time laughing at other’s miseries and then had to face her own. The verse above is my favorite in the whole song. Especially the last five lines. Amazing how time can turn things around? You can see it a lot more times in your lifetime than you can imagine. The verse is from the song “Like a rolling stone.”
The song was described by Dylan to a journalist
"It was ten pages long. It wasn't called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn't hatred, it was telling someone something they didn't know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that's a better word. I had never thought of it as a song, until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper it was singing, 'How does it feel?' in a slow motion pace, in the utmost of slow motion."
2)
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
Dylan recalled writing the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the moment (sentence taken from wikipedia). The song was the anthem of the youth at that time. It was released January 13, 1964. The lines above are the fourth verse of the song. Difficult to pick a favorite verse from any song of his.
About the song, Dylan said
"This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads ...'Come All Ye Bold Highway Men', 'Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens'. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time."
3)
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
The final verse from the song “Mr.Tambourine Man”. Since my first breath, the best lines I’ve ever heard and will be hearing. It drenches me of all my miserable feelings. No matter how hard the world brings me down, these lines make me stand up to my feet. Dylan will be my living God, no matter how stone cold he is. In an interview he said (not exactly the same words) “Why do you need someone to love you when you can love yourself?”
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