Morning Has Broken

A beautiful hymn written by Eleanor Farjeon, made famous by Cat Stevens, made musical by Rick Wakeman, celebrating the God who made it all! Also includes some tales from my visit to the Stretham Rookery.

Welcome to another Friday Classic Hymn. Today we're going to look at "Morning Has Broken." This was on my mind on Easter Sunday because it was a nice fresh morning. We gathered outside to worship, there was dew on the grass, the birds were singing, and we sang songs of the empty grave of course. But then I thought "Morning Has Broken" would have actually worked quite nicely. So I revisited the song and just found myself really enjoying it.

Of course I know the Cat Stevens version—that's where I learned it from, hearing Cat Stevens singing it on CDs that my parents had. It's got that very famous piano intro which was recorded by Rick Wakeman, one of the great piano players of the last 50 to 60 years. I learned it with great joy when I learned to play the piano and always have fun singing the song.

Do you know the song? Share your memories of it and your impressions of it in the comments below. If you're enjoying this content, please consider subscribing to the channel. Let's find out where it came from.

The Story Behind "Morning Has Broken"

These lovely words were written by Eleanor Farjeon, who was an English author of children's stories mostly, although she also wrote a lot of other types of material. She was born in 1881 into a very literary family, and there was always a kind of childlike innocence to her. You can see it in her writing and of course you can see it in this song. Do you sense the innocence in these words?

Not a whole lot is known about this particular song or this little poem that she wrote. It is said that she was inspired in a village called Alfriston in East Sussex. She must have been out in the garden or something surely, and the words came to her.

I was blessed to go to England last year to visit my uncle. He lives in Streatham, and Streatham has got a beautiful common at the top of which are some lovely gardens. Serena and I went and walked around those gardens—beautiful flowers, beautiful big trees. We just took it in. It was quiet and beautiful, and when I was thinking about the song it made me think of that. It brought me back to that moment, and maybe where she was in East Sussex there was something similar.

It was published in many hymnals, but it wasn't really until 1970 when Cat Stevens, an internationally known pop star, recorded it for one of his albums. Then suddenly it became one of those songs that everybody knew.

Farjeon is respected for her work as a writer and especially for the children's books that she wrote. She received the first International Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1956. You can search online for some of the things that she wrote, but perhaps most of all she'll be remembered for the sweet little three-verse hymn that she wrote about a fresh morning and God.

Let's look at these words.

What Do the Lyrics of "Morning Has Broken" Mean?

Verse 1: The Freshness of Creation

Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird.

Have you ever been out into a fresh morning and it just feels like it's the first morning that there ever was? It was so fresh and beautiful. I think that's what she was getting at. It was like the first time she'd experienced morning, the first time she'd ever heard a bird singing—that's how fresh it felt.

I pray sometimes that God would awaken me to things, to encounter them as if I was encountering them for the first time, because otherwise we forget how beautiful they are. I've often wondered to myself: if I were to live in the mountains or by the ocean, would I still be so enamoured by these things, or would they just become everyday commonplace? Every time I go to a place like that, it feels like I'm seeing them for the first time. I hope I'll always be so sensitive to the beauty of God that it's as if I'm seeing them for the first time.

Then the hymn says:

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning, praise for them springing fresh from the word.

It's not just a kind of general feeling of gladness that she gets—unaimed. It is aimed at God. She is praising God for what she sees, for the beauty of the morning, the beauty of the songs of the birds. She wants to praise God because she sees these things spring fresh from the Word.

You see this in the Word of God. You see the psalmists and other writers praising God for the beauty of the earth, for the beauty of creation. In a sense, she is joining them, letting her heart spring into praise out of the Word, seeing God's Word come to life in the garden.

Verse 2: The Sweetness of Rain

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from Heaven, like the first dewfall on the first grass.

There's a beautiful picture here. The rain is sweet when it comes for the first time in a while, isn't it? Sunlit from Heaven—again she's painting this picture of experiencing something as if for the first time, or perhaps for the first time in season. It's always wonderful to experience the first dew, the first rain, or the first snow (which is very rare for us in this part of South Africa), but it's always sweet to see these things. I know that it's because it's God's creation.

She says: Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden.

The other day we went outside early in the morning and our cats love to go out. They were waiting and they ran out, and they got to the grass and it was like they hit brakes because they realised it was wet. They jumped on and jumped back off immediately—cats of course hate the wet. But Farjeon has His praise for the sweetness of the wet garden. Praise God for doing what He does in nature in such a beautiful way.

The wet garden sprung in completeness where His feet pass.

That's a beautiful line. The garden is a place where God's feet pass, and where they walk. Serena's always said that God lives in the Kruger National Park. There's a sacredness there that is unlike anything else. But really, any wet garden is a place where God's feet pass. Of course He passes everywhere—I'm not going to deny that. Yet in a garden, in a fresh beautiful garden after the rain, when there's the first dew, there is also that sacred sense of God's presence.

I wonder if you need to go to the garden today and just praise Him for a place where His feet pass, a place where the sacredness of God can be found because of the beauty in it.

Verse 3: Personal Joy in Creation

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning.

I love verse 3, where she says this. It's such a personal way of saying, "I am finding such joy in this. It's almost as if God has done it just for me." Of course that's not true—He does it for all of us and for His own glory of course. But do you have such a love for God's beauty and creation that you say to yourself, "Mine is the sunlight. He is filling me with joy by the sunlight in the morning"?

Mine is the morning, born of the one light Eden saw play.

That's an interesting line that's always slightly confused me. Is she saying every garden has a little bit of Eden in it? They're all born of the same light Eden saw, sunlight—just as Adam and Eve saw sunlight—and so they're connected in a way?

Praise with elation, praise every morning.

I like that: praise with elation. So praise from the heart, not just saying empty words to God, but praise with joy, with elation from the heart. Praise every morning.

You know what? Maybe you don't get to the garden in the mornings. Maybe you're stuck upstairs in your bed, or maybe you're in a concrete jungle. But you know what? Praise every morning nonetheless, because of God's re-creation of the new day. God's making a new day is always a reason for us to be praiseworthy. When the sun comes up and we see the light, we get a sense of God's beauty in creation.

Conclusion

What a beautiful little song of praise! I love this song. It always makes my heart glad to sing this, and perhaps we should sing it more often. May God stir you to praise as you spend time in the garden or just enjoying the re-creation of the new day from His hand.

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