The Miracle of Morning

“The Miracle of Morning” is a hopeful poem, conveying a message of optimism in every stanza even while acknowledging pain and suffering. The poem’s title introduces this theme with the word “miracle.” A miracle is an event that can only happen through hope and faith in the future; it is a word that often appears in a religious context, one that is defined by faith in abstract ideas and unknowable truths. The inclusion of the word “morning” in the title adds the hopeful tone here, as morning often represents new beginnings, the future, and hope. Morning brings about light after a long night of darkness, and life seems to begin anew with this light, both literally and figuratively. Gorman reinforces the spiritual quality of the morning when she calls it ”golden” (Line 3) and “magical” (Line 4) at the end of the first stanza. Magic, like faith, asks believers for acceptance without proof, and identifying the morning with magic emphasizes the possibility that something larger than humanity is at work.

The third stanza picks up the theme of hope when the speaker asks how society will succeed and, with this questions, presumes that there is no doubt that society will succeed.