"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 3

       In the lyrics as I posted them yesterday, you can see the progression of language, expressive of Bobby's resistance, wrenching transformation, and change.

       In the first three stanzas, Bobby is aggrieved and distanced ("Someone to hold you too close") and satiric ("To ruin your sleep"); in the fourth stanza the language intensifies ("Someone to crowd you," "to force you," "to make you"), and Bobby's  distance collapses ("[Someone] as frightened as you/Of being alive.")

       In the fifth stanza, with Sondheim altering only two or three words from the first stanza, Bobby's complaint ("Someone to hold you too close") transmutes to an anguished and yearning self-referenced plea ("Somebody hold me too close").  And that little but amazing shift carries through every line of stanzas five and six, raising emotions right along with it.