I'll See You in My Dreams

Lyrics

Though the days are long,
Twilight sings a song
Of the happiness that used to be.
Soon my eyes will close,
Soon I'll find repose,
And in dreams you're always here with me.

I'll see you in my dreams,
Hold you in my dreams.
Someone took you out of my arms,
Still I feel the thrill of your charms.
Lips that once were mine,
Tender eyes that shine,
They will light my way tonight,
I'll see you in my dreams.

Lips that once were mine,
Tender eyes that shine,
They will light my way tonight,
I'll see you in my dreams.

Traditional lyrics — public domain. Arrangement © Singalongasong Band / ClassicRocks.

History & Background

History & Origin

"I'll See You in My Dreams" was written by Isham Jones (music) and Gus Kahn (lyrics) and published in 1924. It became one of the most popular songs of the decade, recorded by numerous artists and used in films and radio broadcasts throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Doris Day's 1951 film of the same name, based loosely on the life of lyricist Gus Kahn, brought it to a new generation.

The song belongs to the Tin Pan Alley tradition of sentimental ballads about love and loss, and carries with it the specific emotional texture of the 1920s: a time when parlour songs were still a central form of family entertainment, and popular music carried a lyricism that later decades would largely abandon.

In the context of this collection, it works as a lullaby: the promise of reunion in dreams, the warmth of remembered love, the sense that sleep is a passage to somewhere comforting rather than simply an absence. The verse that builds towards the chorus — twilight singing its song, eyes closing, repose arriving — follows exactly the arc of a child being gently talked towards sleep.

It is one of the more unexpected inclusions in a collection of nursery rhymes, but it sits beautifully alongside them.