One of the things I’d like to do on this blog from time to time is reflect on songs that, for one reason or another, have stuck with me over the years. I enjoy sitting with a song and exploring what it might mean – not just the meaning that the songwriter intended, but what it means to me personally. As I touched on in my Poetry Without a Poet post, I’m not aiming to find the One True Meaning of any given song. I’m not here to tell you what a song should mean to you. But I hope that by sharing what it’s meant to me, it might enrich your own understanding – adding one more thread to the tapestry of meaning we all bring to the music we love.
As I touched on in Poetry Without a Poet, art often carries meanings beyond what the artist intended. I’m not searching for the “One True Meaning” of any song. Instead, my hope is that this interpretation adds another layer to the meaning and beauty that this music already holds.
“Awake My Soul” is a track by the British folk-rock band Mumford & Sons, released in 2009 on their debut album Sigh No More. The band quickly became known for their rich, folksy sound, paired with lyrics that explore raw emotional themes with spiritual undertones. While not a religious band, many of their lyrics tap into questions of identity, love, purpose, and grace. They often use language that feels a bit religious in tone – which makes sense given that lead singer Marcus Mumford grew up in a home where both parents were leaders in the Association of Vineyard Churches. “Awake My Soul” has always stood out to me (since I first heard it back in college) as one of their more reflective songs, weaving together themes of longing, vulnerability, and transformation in just a few verses.
If you haven’t heard it in a while (or ever), I encourage you to listen to the track below with fresh ears. After that, I’ll dive into exploring the lyrics more closely.
Here are the lyrics, for reference:
How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know
My weakness I feel I must finally showLend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally freeHar har, har har, har har, har har
Awake my soul
Awake my soulHow fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know
My weakness I feel I must finally showHar har, har har, har har, har har
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your life
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your lifeAwake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For you were made to meet your makerAwake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For you were made to meet your maker
You were made to meet your makerMumford and Sons – Awake My Soul
I really love this song. It has a quiet, reflective tone that resonates deeply with me, and I appreciate how it gradually builds – not just musically, but emotionally as well – into something that feels like an anthem.
Now I’d like to go back through the lyrics, one section at a time, to reflect on the layers of meaning I’ve found in them.
How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know
My weakness I feel I must finally show
Right from the start, the song opens with a humble admission of insufficiency. The narrator is beginning to realize that both their internal experience and their external senses are fallible. Despite our best efforts, knowing what is true can be a lifelong struggle – a perpetual quest. There’s so much we don’t know, and trying to sort through it often feels like stumbling in the dark, the way we do when we get out of bed in the middle of the night and aren’t fully awake yet. Our eyes are woozy, we may lose our balance from time to time, and the world around us still feels a bit like a dream.
There’s a shift here toward authentic transparency – not out of confidence or pride, but more like a quiet confession. It’s a vulnerable way to begin, and it sets the tone for what’s to come: a song about the difficult, deeply human work of waking up. Not just waking our bodies from sleep – but waking our souls from a kind of spiritual sleepwalking.
Lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free
At this point in the song, the narration seems to shift. I imagine the singer turning and speaking directly to someone close – maybe a friend, a partner, someone he deeply cares about. Life is hard, and we can do this together. I’ll take your hand to steady you. I’ll help describe what’s around the corner. I’ll be your second set of eyes when it’s hard to see.
But your heart and your soul? Don’t entrust them to me, the singer seems to say – at least not ultimately. I will fail you. Not because I don’t care, but because I’m human. The weight of carrying another’s soul is, by its very nature, too much for any one person. The kind of freedom he sings about here is one that has to come from somewhere else – something greater, deeper, more enduring than any of us on our own.
Har har, har har, har har, har har
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Then comes another shift – the repeated “har har, har har” line. At first, it might sound like filler. It almost feels like a breath, perhaps just a pause to reflect. But I imagine something deeper going on here.
To me, the sound carries the rhythm of laughter. Not mockery, not sarcasm, but the kind of quiet laugh that might sneak up on you when you’re suddenly confronted with the truth – when something that you’ve wrestled with for so long turns out to have a surprisingly simple answer. It’s the laugh that slips out when we realize we’ve been talking in our sleep, or when we notice that the memory we were ruminating on was actually from a dream. It comes from a place of deep, soulful bewilderment – a quiet laugh in acknowledgement of truth, beauty, or mystery.
And then we hear the phrase that becomes the anchor of the song: “Awake my soul.” It starts almost like a whisper – perhaps even a prayer. The repetition doesn’t feel performative; it feels necessary, like speaking it aloud is the only way to begin believing it. This is a pivot point, where the song starts to move from observing the darkness to seeking the dawn.
After repeating the earlier confession of weakness – perhaps now with a bit more conviction – the narrator comes to another insightful realization.
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your life
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your life
Now, the narrator seems to take a step back and look at life from a wider perspective. What is it all about, really? In just a few lines, he makes two profound statements.
First, that we are mortal – we are embodied beings who live in these physical forms for a time, and then are buried. No matter our career, our wealth, our family, or even our perceived righteousness… we live in these bodies, and we die in them.
And from that realization of mortality comes a second insight: whether we’re aware of it or not, we are all constantly investing our lives somewhere. Our lives, as a whole, are a precious currency. We cannot hoard this currency – it will be spent somewhere – and how we love determines how our lives are invested.
Talk of love and investment reminds me of the Parable of the Talents – a story Jesus tells where servants are each entrusted with a form of valuable currency. Most of them take what they’ve been given and find ways to invest it so that it grows. But one servant, out of fear or caution, buries what was entrusted to him. It’s lower risk, sure – but it also defeats the purpose. These talents weren’t meant to be hidden. They were meant to be used.
In the same way, our love – and our lives – are the most valuable currency we’ve been given to invest. Yes, they’re ours in a sense, but they’re also not meant to be clutched tightly or hidden away in the name of safety. We’re called to invest them into the lives of others in a way that brings growth, joy, and connection. We’re to invest wisely – not naïvely, not hastily, but also not sparingly.
If we aren’t investing our love – if we aren’t taking some kind of risk to use our soul in service of others (because all investment carries risk) – then, as Jesus might argue, we’re wasting the most valuable thing that we’ve ever been given.
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For you were made to meet your maker
You were made to meet your maker
And then, the song enters its final refrain – building slowly and steadily, transforming a fragile plea into a declaration. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up, the narrator urges himself. You were made for something more than this. And the more, here, isn’t about ambition or accomplishment, he says – it’s about meeting the one who made you.
The initial confessions in the song are still true – our eyes are woozy, our hearts are fickle. It’s a long journey, we will make many missteps, and we will get distracted (over and over again). But we can help each other, lend our eyes, lend our hands, and invest our love generously in those around us with the limited time we are given.
And in the end, when we finally rise from the great slumber – this hazy dream that life is often like – we step into a new chapter. One where our telos, our ultimate purpose, is not the end… but the beginning.
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