Today is the birthday of Robert Hunter (1941-2019), lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator, and poet best known for his songwriting contributions to the Grateful Dead.
Robert Hunter in 2015 when he was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. (AP photo)
Hunter was born June 23, 1941, in California. Some biographies claim he was a great-great-grandson of the Romantic poet Robert Burns. He published several collections of his poetry and along with the Dead, collaborated with Bob Dylan, Bruce Hornsby, and Los Lobos. As Hornsby put it, “I’ve loved so many of the [Jerry] Garcia/Hunter songs. They’re just timeless-sounding to me, could have been written hundreds of years ago.”
The New Yorker published an essay by Nick Paumgarten following Hunter's death on Sept. 23, 2019.
"He never performed with the band but provided it with the universe of images, ideas, and tales—and all the one-liners, couplets, anthems, and puzzlers—that gave some quicksilver conceptual coherence and old-timey cred to the Dead’s shambling psychedelic Dixieland. He grounded it, if you can say that, in a phantasmagoric reiteration of American folk legend: drifters, thieves, rounders, jailbirds, horndogs, vigilantes, and roustabouts. 'Truckin’, 'Ripple,' 'Friend of the Devil,' 'Stella Blue,' 'Uncle John’s Band'—all written by Hunter. There were very few conventional, charting hits but lots of home runs."
For today's Poetry Friday, we're sharing Robert Hunter's "Eyes of the World," which NPR calls "a lonely agrarian pleasure."
The song's origins are a mystery. Hunter famously avoided explanations or analyses of his lyrics. The phrase "You Are the Eyes of the World" has been attributed to Tibetan Buddhist Longchenpa (1308-1363), and a couplet in the chorus echoes lines from Blaise Pascal's Penseés, published in 1680.
Pascal -- “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
Hunter -- “The heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own.”
Below the poem, watch a live performance of "Eyes of the World" by the Grateful Dead with special guest Branford Marsalis on saxophone recorded live on March 29, 1990, at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Eyes of the World
By Robert Hunter
Right outside this lazy summer home
you don't have time to call your soul a critic, no
Right outside the lazy gate of winter's summer home
wondering where the nut-thatch winters
Wings a mile long just carried the bird away
Wake up to find out
that you are the eyes of the world
but the heart has its beaches
its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you
are the song that the morning brings
but the heart has its seasons
its evenings and songs of its own
There comes a redeemer
and he slowly too fades away
There follows a wagon behind him
that's loaded with clay
and the seeds that were silent
all burst into bloom and decay
The night comes so quiet
and it's close on the heels of the day
Wake up to find out
that you are the eyes of the world
but the heart has its beaches
its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you
are the song that the morning brings
but the heart has its seasons
its evenings and songs of its own
Sometimes we live no
particular way but our own
Sometimes we visit your country
and live in your home
Sometimes we ride on your horses
Sometimes we walk alone
Sometimes the songs that we hear
are just songs of our own
Wake up to find out
that you are the eyes of the world
but the heart has its beaches
its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you
are the song that the morning brings
but the heart has its seasons
its evenings and songs of its own
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