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All You Who Sleep Tonight

All You Who Sleep Tonight is a 1990 collection of poems by Vikram Seth.

British composer Jonathan Dove set eight of the quatrains and five other poems to music for Nuala Willis in a 1996 song cycle of the same name.

Contents

The collection is grouped into five sections:

  • Romantic Residues, poems which reflect on feelings of love and their effects, or after-effects
  • In Other Voices, poems from the viewpoint of people in other times and places, such as a doctor in Hiroshima on the day of the atomic bomb
  • In Other Places, poems about places and people encountered in his travels
  • Quatrains, four-line poems on themes as diverse as insomnia and table manners
  • Meditations of the Heart, ranging from admiration of the Russian dissident poet Irina Ratushinskaya to the title poem of the volume.

A selection of the poems has been set by British composer Jonathan Dove, and recorded on an award-winning CD for the Naxos label by mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon and pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen.

Title Poem

All You Who Sleep Tonight<br> All you who sleep tonight <br> Far from the ones you love,<br> No hand to left or right<br> And emptiness above—<br> <br> Know that you aren't alone.<br> The whole world shares your tears,<br> Some for two nights or one,<br> And some for all their years.

References

External links