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The Inner Light

Words copyright ©2000 by Blake Hodgetts
Melody adapted from Jay Chattaway's Ressikan Flute theme
from the Star Trek: the Next Generation episodes "The Inner Light" and "Lessons".
( See this site for six MIDI versions of this theme.)
(Note: This melody is sometimes compared to the "Skye Boat Song" but it's quite different after the first three measures;
this song cannot be sung to the Skye Boat Song's tune.)

(This song was inspired by the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode of the same name.)

How can I heal this ache in my soul?
     There’s no word for what I have lost
Thirty-five years of life I recall
     Yet my mind is a vast confusion

Loved I a wife, or raised I a son?
     Who am I, and what is my past?
Must I resume what I’d once begun,
     As if life were a grand illusion?


I was content in duty and deed
     Stoic, stern, a pillar of stone
Now that my heart has learned how to need,
     Can I ever again regain it?

Curst be that beam that molded my mind
     Why could it not leave me alone?
And yet I’d not lose what it forced me to find,
     Nor can I ever hope to explain it.


Dearest of friends, come sit here with me
     I may weep but I cannot mourn
Was it that light I was too blind to see,
     Did I truly perceive so dimly?

Blest be that race gone ages before
     And in me so briefly reborn
Whatever I was, I am now so much more
     For the light that has shone within me


(instrumental verse)

Now must I find a place in my heart
     For the love I cannot refute
All that remains is a trace of my art
     That flows through my fingers and my flute…


(instrumental verse concludes)