Sign on the Window

I read the song in a quite literate sense: The first and the second stanza are about a lost love and the experienced rejection. The fourth stanza tells us what happened then. The lyrical I moves, after losing the love of his youth, to the countryside and becomes the father of a family.

This might be my personal prejudice, but at the same time I read into the fourth stanza pain: The description of an idyll that does not feel as an idyll to the lyrical I -- one of the most subtle and deep forms of pain.. The hint is: "That must be what it is all about", not "That is what it is all about." The lyrical I tries to persuade himself that he is living the best of all possible lifes, but he is not quite feeling the way. Maybe he still wants to be the one who went with the girl to California.

Only this interpretation gives the song its full force, I feel, transcending the usual love song to something more ironic and bitter. Ambiguity is one of Dylan's trademark features.

This used to be my favorite song while growing up. I always was intrigued by the third 'verse' which is that three line interlude. It starts with the rhyme 'rain' in te first line and ends with the rhyme 'sleet' in the third. They're joint together in the middle line as 'Main Street' which reflects both side (rain and sleet) which is nice since Main Street also symbolizes a median. It's the very subject of crossing a median and looking to the other side which symbolizes what this song is all about. Turning the corner from adolescence and youth to middle age- with concepts of filial love and stability. If you think about youth and how you always look to the other side with transparency, you may see the approach of death (middle-age) as a sign on the window.

I'm just the 2nd comment? I'm surpirsed. This song is about rejection and I think it's sad, especially the tone of the music that goes along with his voice. At the end of the song, he's hopeful for the future, despite the fact that he was turned away.

I think that the final stanza of this song encapsulates the meaning of the song as a whole. The first stanza seems about the lack of family unity, the second of a similar theme, being the separation of lovers, and the third is an introspective walk alone. But the fourth stanza, here is where the heart strings are somewhat plucked. Bob has a vision--and a particularly holy one too--that the love of a family is more special than any love, and perhaps the cure for lonliness and the first step to something higher, which, I believe, his later years make clear...

Had a crush on a college girl from Brighton who had a boyfriend. She moves with him to California, leaving him behind wistful of the love he never had but feels he has lost.

Last stanza is his dream of "the good life" he wanted to have with his lost Brighton girl.

i agree about this song being about rejection, but why does the sign on the window say "lonely"? oh and the rhyme scheme of the third stanza is brilliant, i love it.