"Funky Pretty"

Off and on over the last three months or so, I transcribed the lyrics from the liner notes of my edition of Holland into Google Documents for each of the songs so that they're easier to reference.  When I transcribed "Funky Pretty" this morning, I noticed a significant structural change in the third verse.

There are two vocal parts in the verses.  Each sings different lyrics, but they converge on the last word in each line, which is either the same or a perfect rhyme ("romance" and "romance," "glance" and "dance," and "dance" and "glance" in the first verse, "gold" and "gold," "old" and "bold," and "told" and "told" in the second).  This structure is broken in the third verse, though, where these simultaneously sung words are "ours" and "hours," "hours" and "stars," and "stars" and "powers."  This difference in the structure matches the theme of some of the lyrics in that verse:  "Her calendar is not like ours" and "The hieroglyphs mark changing hours."

Holland

Last week I listened Holland (for only the third time), and I noticed two small things:

"Steamboat"

The backing vocals sing the lines "Don't worry, Mr. Fulton / We'll get your steamboat rollin'," which refers to Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat.

"Funky Pretty"

One of the lines is "A book of verse, a jug of wine," which comes from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.  I got this for Christmas last year, but I haven't read it yet; I actually recognized the reference because this same line is quoted (misquoted, actually) in an episode of The Monkees ("The Wild Monkees" S2E10) and the DVD trivia points out the allusion.  In Edward FitzGerald's translation, the relevant section (XI) is:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.