I am interested in the songs in which Dylan trusts the melody to pull the words along with it, to make the lyrics seem true and right, even if on the page they seem bizarre and obscure. Songs like “Farewell Angelina”, “Changing of the Guards” and “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”. Dylan likes direct rhymes, and that too gives these songs an aura of completion. Within this system, he is free to riff and improvise, bewitch the listener with his tone, find a way to throw in elements of a dream, or a private set of images. Some of the lines sound like something that came raw into his head. Because his head is a place filled with rich echo and intricate mischief, the images sound urgent most of the time, almost true.
Sometimes, he picks words because of their sound. Perhaps the only advantage of the word “chimes” is that it rhymes with “rhymes” and with “times”. Thus, his sad-eyed lady has a voice “like chimes” and his “Changing of the Guards” has “the wailing of chimes”. He also loves an ingenious rhyme, such as matching “lowlands” with “no man comes”, knowing that his style of singing will fill in whatever is missing in the echoing sound.
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