We Are Getting to the End

We are getting to the end of visioning
The impossible within this universe,
Such as that better whiles may follow worse,
And that our race may mend by reasoning.

We know that even as larks in cages sing
Unthoughtful of deliverance from the curse
That holds them lifelong in a latticed hearse,
We ply spasmodically our pleasuring.

And that when nations set them to lay waste
Their neighbours' heritage by foot and horse,
And hack their pleasant plains in festering seams,
They may again, – not warily, or from taste,
But tickled mad by some demonic force. –
Yes. We are getting to the end of dreams!
BY THOMAS HARDY
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

"All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening....

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."

So down we lay again. "I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!"

And many a skeleton shook his head.
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
and this again from Hardy.
Christmas: 1924

'Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
When Bob Dylan, can write 3 poems as powerful as the above, perhaps he can seriously be considered as a poet in the mean time his award has devalued the prize, on occasions he writes fairly well, but he loves to be unclear in what he is trying to say, as far as i am concerned in his later years he has become an establishment fdolypop singer of a similiar ilk to MacCartney.
his one outstanding song is MASTERS OF WAR, The message is clear,to a lesser extent "times are changing" some of the others are catchy and tuneful but a bit lightweight[ mr tambourine man, boots of spanish leather]
blowing in the wind is pleasant, but lets compare it to where have all the flowers gone[ whose message is absolutely crystal clear] Dylan said about blowin in the wind
There ain't too much I can say about this song except that the answer is blowing in the wind. It ain't in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group. Man, it's in the wind — and it's blowing in the wind. Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won't believe that. I still say it's in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper it's got to come down some ... But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know ... and then it flies away. I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong and know it's wrong. I'm only 21 years old and I know that there's been too many ... You people over 21, you're older and smarter
The above comment is typical Bob Dylan, except that he doesnt mention this his possible inspoiration.
The theme may have been taken from a passage in Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory, in which Guthrie compared his political sensibility to newspapers blowing in the winds of New York City streets and alleys. Dylan was certainly familiar with Guthrie's work; his reading of it had been a major turning point in his intellectual and political development.
neither did Bob Dylan admit for a long time that one verse of dont think twice was borrowed from a singer called Paul Clayton LISTEN TO THIS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6vxyTM3fO4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6vxyTM3fO4