Morning comes, she follows the path to the river shore
Lightly sung, her song is the latch on the morning’s door1
See the sun sparkle in the reeds; silver beads pass into the sea
She comes from a town where they call her the woodcutter’s daughter
She’s brown as the bank where she kneels down to gather her water
And she bears it away with a love that the river has taught her
Let it flow, greatly flow, wide and clear
’Round and ’round, the cut of the plow in the furrowed field
Seasons round, the bushels of corn and the barley meal
Broken ground, open and beckoning to the spring; black dirt live again
The plowman is broad as the back of the land he is sowing
As he dances the circular track of the plow ever knowing
That the work of his day measures more than the planting and growing2
Let it grow, let it grow, greatly yield
Chorus:
What shall we say, shall we call it by a name3
As well to count the angels dancing on a pin4
Water bright as the sky from which it came
And the name is on the earth that takes it in
We will not speak but stand inside the rain
And listen to the thunder shout5
I am, I am, I am, I am6
So it goes, we make what we made since the world began
Nothing more, the love of the women, work of men
Seasons round, creatures great and small, up and down, as we rise and fall7
What shall we say, shall we call it by a name
As well to count the angels dancing on a pin
Water bright as the sky from which it came
And the name is on the earth that takes it in
We will not speak but stand inside the rain
And listen to the thunder shout
I am, I am, I am, I am
Words by John Barlow
Music by Bob Weir
Studio outtakes from Wake of the Flood sessions show this line being sung originally as “Stepping free, she places her feet where they fell before.”
Compare Hesiod’s Works and Days, which extols the intrinsic virtue of a pastoral life.
Frederick Mathewson Denny, in his article on “Names and naming” in the The Encyclopedia of Religion, says:
It is common to nearly all religious practices that in order to communicate with a deity, one must know its name. Knowledge of a divine name gives the knower both power and an avenue of communication with its source. This intimate relationship between knowing a name and participating in its power has both religious and magical aspects.
Denny then proceeds to examine the tradition of the naming of deities throughout world religious practices. See also the note under “I am,” below.
From the article “Angel/Angelology” by E. Ann Matter, in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages:
Aquinas devoted fourteen books of the Summa theologiae to the nature and powers of angels. He held that angels have form but not matter, and are therefore eternal and incorruptible. Angels are able to assume bodies; these bodies take up space, so only one angel can be in a particular place at a certain time. In contrast, Duns Scotus asserted that angels consist of both form and a non corporeal matter particular to them alone, which makes it possible for more than one angel to occupy the same place at the same time (De Anima, XV; De rerum principio, VII–VIII). The ensuing debates over these positions may have given rise to the early modern legend that the Scholastics argued over such questions as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Compare T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, “What the Thunder Said.”
Again quoting from Denny’s article on “Names and naming”:
Moses asked the voice from the burning bush, identified as “the god of your father,” what his name was, and was answered “I am” (ehyeh), which, in a different Hebrew grammatical form, is rendered Yahveh (approximately, “He causes to be”; Exodus, 3:13–14).
There is some debate within the academic community surrounding this, with some scholars asserting that the translation for ehyeh should be “I will be.”
Barlow’s turn of phrase in associating the sound of thunder with the name of the deity resonates throughout world religion as the “sky-god,” who has the power of thunder and is often the chief god in the pantheon of any given religious system.
In Australian Aboriginal culture, the name of the sky god is divulged in the sound of the bull-roarer, which Mickey Hart writes about in Drumming at the Edge of Magic.
Compare the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (1848) by Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–95):
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
Barlow exhibits a fondness for this hymn in his lyrics for “Just a Little Light” as well, with the line “Holding little but contempt for all things beautiful and bright.”
Written in Salt Lake City, February 1973.
Studio recording: Wake of the Flood (November 15, 1973).
First performance: September 7, 1973, at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. It remained in the repertoire thereafter.