Saturday, April 20, 2019

"Be Here in the Morning"

I noticed a number of things about the chorus of "Be Here in the Morning":
Be here in the morning
Be here in the evening
Be here and make my life full
Be here in the morning
Be here in the evening
Be here and make my life
"Be here in the morning / Be here in the evening" uses a rhetorical device called a merism in which two extremes are named in order to represent a whole range.  Although "morning" and "evening" are the two specific times mentioned, the sense is really "Be here all the time."

That each line starts with "Be here..." is an instance of anaphora, an-other rhetorical device in which a word of phrase is repeated.  The effect emphasizes the request and also represents the constancy wished for ("Be here in the morning / Be here in the evening").

I think I'd noticed this before, but the "full" in the line "Be here and make my life full" is sung by a number of additional voices, musically giving a sense of that "full"-ness.

There's a semantic shift in the meaning of "make" between "Be here and make my life full" and "Be here and make my life."  Because the first half of the chorus is repeated except for that "full," the listener is left waiting in expectation of the missing word.  To some degree, this is the same sentiment that the line itself expresses:  the singer/speaker's life is incomplete, and he needs "you" to "make my life" (that is:  to complete it).