“All You Sleep Tonight” is a collection of poems written by Vikram Seth in the year 1990. The poems written by Vikram Seth are considered as a reference to how to write poetry.
“All You Sleep Tonight” is written in very simple and easily understandable English language. It is a highly profound and amazingly poignant poem which comes with a universal message. This poem easily connects with the reader stating that no one is alone in the journey of life there are many invisible factors protecting, loving, guiding and taking care of you.
The poet by the way of this poem speaks to those who are faraway from their loved ones.He sympathizes with the loneliness of those living alone at a different places and environments or has lost their loved ones.
Life is easy when one stays with those who loves and cares for them. A person feels more comfortable living with his loved ones or at a place where he is born and brought up, that place is considered as his comfort zone. A person can have many comfort zones. At a comfort zone a person lives happily with his loving and caring family.Even office of a person can be considered a comfort zone if the person is happy and feels safe and secure there.
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But change is the law of nature; one cannot stay forever with his loved ones or in their comfort zones, at times one has to leave your comfort zone either forever or for some day.
Now the poet is speaking to those who are far away from their comfort zone. These people are sad and lonely because either they are alone in an unknown and unfamiliar place or they are missing their loved ones.The poet feels sympathy towards them and ask them not to consider themselves alone. He says the entire world is by their side and shares their pain and sorrows. In the sense he is not the only one suffering from separation. There are many people out there in the same situation. Separation is a part of life. Everything is important in life, even the experience of separation which teaches us to be strong and self-sufficient.
There is a saying that when a person dies, he/she takes the form of star. This is the reason the poet ask the person feeling alone and unsecured to stop feeling that way and look up at the stars know they are not alone. The person they are missing is right there watching them. And when you realize the person you are missing is near you, you feel better and are is able to sleep deeply.
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We cannot sleep until and unless we are truly free within and make peace within ourselves. When a reader reads this poem, he sees himself save in the cradle of life with millions of stars above sharing his pain and loneliness. This poem acts as a sedative to that what is unable to sleep and helps in creating inner peace.