There’s an insistence in this song as Morrison pushes the lyrics into an incantation as if he could physically break through from this corporeal world into a mystical kingdom. And what a testament to his love, the longing, the desire the energy and fierce force we feel when in throes of passion.
And I shall drive my chariot down your streets and cry
Hey, it’s me, I’m dynamite and I don’t know why
And you shall take me strongly in your arms again
And I will not remember that I even felt the pain
His love will be his salvation, it will untie him with the life force behind all living things:
And I will never grow so old again
And I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rain
Oh, whoa-oh, sweet thing, this sweet thing
Hey-hey, yeah, sweet thing, yeah
Yeah-yeah-yeah, my, my, my, my sweet thing
It reminds me of the fifth section of Whitman’s “Song of Myself:”
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.
#Songoftheday #vanmorrison #sweetthing #astralweeks
YouTube: https://youtu.be/JFAp3aRJ2vA?si=sk-WIcIfN8gtO6BS
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/7rPsF218CASDaDEoMkEe03?si=65dcd5aae469478b