Is Your Love in Vain?

My first post on this site goes to this song. If i were to make a Dylan compilation, this song would definitely be in... The overall mood of the song and Bob's voice is so perfect. Just like "Sarah", this is one of the best examples of Bob, clearly saying what he is meaning other than metaphorically speaking... And he does it best when he does...

Great red carpet intro...his heart is aching for true love

Honestly I think this is one of his greater songs, especially from Street-Legal. Probably written during/after his divorcing Sara, it features all the feelings one feel during a break-up (especially after a long, long relationship).

The line "I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings, and I've never been too impressed" is one of my favs. I think it so accurately captures the feeling of having lost something, not having appreciated the life and reality you've lived in. Spoken from someone who've lost whom I believed to be the one, I can't do more than agree.

Great intro...title says it all.

How did noone comment on this??? That's Bob Dylan's BEST song ever!!!!

... and i wonder who he sings to?

i heard this song on a cover album my friend had. All acoustic. This song on acoustic is brilliant. The original I've never really listened to....

I love this song, but does it remind anyone else of Procul Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" ?

I think the first two lines explain the song. The singer feels he may love someone, but is not sure if it is just love in a friendship way that he is getting back.

I think this is a song about finding a woman who would give him at that time, everything that Sarah gave him. Sarah used to cook and sew and make flowers grow. However, after the divorce Dylan encountered other females from the musical scene lacking those classical Sarah female virtues. So he asks the lover if she would sacrifice all her life to be with him, a complicated character. It is not a misoginy song at all as many are saying. Most of Dylan songs take things from his real life and then he adds poetry to those common issues that we all experiment as humans.

I think this song appears at first to be a conventional love song, but is in fact the first hint of Dylan's interest in Christ in his music. I read it as a jaded legend, who has seen it all, in disbelief that he could fall in love with Jesus, but still wanting to experience something so different from how his life had been up to that point.

He has trepidation that in committing to faith that he will lose his core identity:

"When I am in the darkness, why do you intrude?

Do you know my world, do you know my kind

Or must I explain?

Will you let me be myself

Or is your love in vain?"

There is more Biblical imagery as he says

"Well I’ve been to the mountain and I’ve been in the wind"

which to me invokes Elijah on Mount Horeb, then he talks about earthly kings, and riches, and how they haven't impressed--so he's looking to the only thing bigger than those experiences--hesitantly and irresistibly falling in love with God.

And I wish to echo the other comments here--one of his very best vocals!