Claude-Michel Schönberg Valjean's Soliloquy (What Have I Done?) Lyrics

VALJEAN
What have I done?
Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
Become a thief in the night!
Become a dog on the run!
And have I fallen so fair
And is the hour so late
That nothing remains but the cry of my hate,
The cries in the dark that nobody hears
Here where I stand at the turning of the years?

If there's another way to go
I missed it twenty long years ago.
My life was a war that could never be won
They gave me a number and murdered Valjean
When they chained me and left me for dead
Just for stealing a mouthful of bread.

Yet why did I allow this man
To touch my soul and teach me love?
He treated me like any other.
He gave me his trust.
He called his Brother.
My life he claims for God above.
Can such things be?
For I had come to hate this world.
This world that always hated me!

Take an eye for any eye.
Turn your heart into stone.
This is all I have lived for.
This is all I have known.
One word from him and I'd be back
Beneath the lash, upon the rack.
Instead, he offers me my freedom.
I feel my shame inside me like a knife.
He told me that I have a soul.
How does he know?
What spirit comes to move my life?
Is there another way to go?

I am reaching, but I fall
And the night is closing in,
And I stare into the void-
To the whirlpool of my sin.
I'll escape now from the world
From the world of Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean is nothing now.
Another story must begin!

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