"The earth is strung with lovers' pearls..."

The song "Dark Eyes" by Bob Dylan will be the focus of this article.

I think that initially, it is important to look at where this is possibly set. The setting seems to be in some time of war, because we have ‘gentlemen’ and we have ‘soldiers’. The ‘gentlemen’ obviously are not the ones going to war, so they can drink and have a great time, whilst the images of the soldiers are rather solitary and isolated, normally very melancholy and quiet in comparison to their counterparts. The narrator states that they have to leave the gentlemen to go somewhere else, as if trying to observe both sides of the coin of society in these troubled times:

“Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside,

They're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide…”

When the narrator comments on living in a place where ‘life and death are memorised…’ it sounds as if nobody will die an untimely death in his world and so, the war would clearly not be happening as it causes a lot of untimely deaths. The fact that the earth ‘is strung with lovers’ pearls’ possibly means that the whole world will have the same wealth that these gentlemen are having at this particular moment in time and will also have the same amount of carefreeness, not having to worry about a war that does not exist:

“I live in another world where life and death are memorised,

Where the earth is strung with lovers' pearls and all I see are dark eyes.”

The gentlemen have gone off for the night and now it is morning. The soldier is awakening in prayer and the mother’s son has possibly run off to join the army and help out because, in this situation, that is normally what happens when it comes to underage boys - they end up running off to join the army with their friends:

“A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer,

Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere…”

The narrator seems to know something that the mother does not and that is the fact that yes, her son has run off to join the war effort because ‘the dead that rise’ are the dead ideas that are going to be put into her son’s mind. The ‘beating drum’ is therefore the marching drum of a military parade, possibly bearing the son’s casket back to her. The narrator therefore can conclude that ‘life and death are memorised…” and he is correct in his judgements:

“But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise,

Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.”

The narrator then claims that because he is on the winning side, the war effort is trying to tell him what to say and what not to say even though he does not see himself as directly involved with them. They also comment on the act of ‘revenge’ even though again, the narrator does not identify as a part of the war effort though he lives in the place that is winning:

“They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes,

They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is…”

As the beauty and talents of other places are going unrecognised, the narrator sees himself drift further and further away from this war effort and feels nothing for the leaders of it. Instead, he just feels the carnage that the war effort is doing to his own home:

“But I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognised,

All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes.”

He then concentrates on people that die because of the silly mistakes of someone else. In this case, he uses the microcosm of the French Girl and the Drunk Driver as a metaphor for the war. The drunk driver is obviously the commanding officer and the French girl is a soldier. The car, obviously crashes because of the fact the drunk man is at the wheel of the car:

“Oh, the French girl, she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel,

Hunger pays a heavy price to the falling gods of speed and steel…”

He finally comments on the fact that there are practically dead bodies everywhere and yet he is supposed to believe that everything is okay when it is not. He states that ‘time is short’ and ‘days are sweet’ whilst also thinking about the dead bodies of war that he cannot recognise. He does not acknowledge which side they are from, for they are just faces to him:

“Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies,

A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.”