Answer: "Salman Rushdie, a Nobel candidate himself, called Dylan ‘the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition.’"
Explanation:
This excerpt is the one who is supporting the claim that rock lyrics are poetry because it is connecting music with lyrics and the writer's abilities to express himself through his music.
Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 although he is a well-known musician, not a writer. His lyrics are considered poetry and in this excerpt, he is connected with bardic tradition which is referring to eighteenth-century writers that were located in Ireland and Scotland. They were also reciters of poetry while playing instruments such as lyre and harp.
The metaphor compares tea with the entirety of the British empire. It starts by saying that 'tea' should be banished and should go back to Britain "where gold enslaves", meaning where money rules all. The song becomes more broad and loses the specific relation to tea, while attacking Britain's strategy of rule, comparing Americans to being enslaved on a "yoke" (treated like cattle). The final stanza loses the metaphor and is an explicit call to action for everyone to stand up and fight for their freedom.
