Miserables, Les (Related Recordings) - Valjean's Soliloquy lyrics

What have I done sweet Jesus? What have I done?

Become a thief in the night? Become a dog on the run?

Have I fallen so far 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, murdered Valjean

When the chained me and left me for dead

Just for stealing a mouthful of bread

Yet why did I allow that man, to touch my soul and teach me love?

He treated me like any other

He gave me his trust, he called me "brother"

My life he claims for God above. Can such things be?

For I had come to hate the world, this world that always hated me

Take an eye for an 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 had 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

As 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!!!