Gates Of Eden

Album: Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
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  • Of war and peace the truth just twists
    Its curfew gull just glides
    Upon four-legged forest clouds
    The cowboy angel rides
    With his candle lit into the sun
    Though its glow is waxed in black
    All except when 'neath the trees of Eden

    The lamppost stands with folded arms
    Its iron claws attached
    To curbs 'neath holes where babies wail
    Though it shadows metal badge
    All and all can only fall
    With a crashing but meaningless blow
    No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden

    The savage soldier sticks his head in sand
    And then complains
    Unto the shoeless hunter who's gone deaf
    But still remains
    Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
    At ships with tattooed sails
    Heading for the Gates of Eden

    With a time-rusted compass blade
    Aladdin and his lamp
    Sits with Utopian hermit monks
    Side saddle on the Golden Calf
    And on their promises of paradise
    You will not hear a laugh
    All except inside the Gates of Eden

    Relationships of ownership
    They whisper in the wings
    To those condemned to act accordingly
    And wait for succeeding kings
    And I try to harmonize with songs
    The lonesome sparrow sings
    There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden

    The motorcycle black Madonna
    Two-wheeled gypsy queen
    And her silver-studded phantom cause
    The gray flannel dwarf to scream
    As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
    Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
    And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden

    The kingdoms of experience
    In the precious wind they rot
    While paupers change possessions
    Each one wishing for what the other has got
    And the princess and the prince
    Discuss what's real and what is not
    It doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden

    The foreign sun, it squints upon
    A bed that is never mine
    As friends and other strangers
    From their fates try to resign
    Leaving men wholly, totally free
    To do anything they wish to do but die
    And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden

    At dawn my lover comes to me
    And tells me of her dreams
    With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
    Into the ditch of what each one means
    At times I think there are no words
    But these to tell what's true
    And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden Writer/s: Bob Dylan
    Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 1

  • Fred from Laurel, MdThis song was track 2, side 2 of his first electric album, "Bringing It All Back Home." It was also the B-side of his "Like a Rolling Stone" single.
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