The Morning Sun is Shining by Olive Schreiner (Grade 12 NSC Matric English HL): Revision Notes
The Morning Sun is Shining by Olive Schreiner
Poem overview
This poem is a romantic piece that explores the powerful contrast between the lasting beauty of the natural world and the temporary, often painful nature of human experience. The speaker begins by celebrating the wonderful morning scene around her, but the poem takes a dramatic emotional turn when personal grief interrupts this celebration of nature's splendour.
Structure and form
Understanding how Schreiner organises this poem helps us appreciate its emotional impact. The work consists of 16 lines arranged in four distinct sections, each serving a specific purpose in developing the poem's central contrast.
Structural Organisation:
- Lines 1-4: Focus on visual imagery (what the speaker sees)
- Lines 5-8: Shift to auditory experiences (sounds of nature)
- Lines 9-12: Appeal to sense of smell (fragrances in the air)
- Lines 13-16: Emotional revelation and tone shift
The first section (lines 1-4) focuses on visual imagery, describing what the speaker sees in the morning light. Lines 5-8 shift to auditory experiences, capturing the sounds of nature awakening. The third section (lines 9-12) appeals to our sense of smell, describing the fragrances that fill the air.
What makes the structure particularly effective is that the first twelve lines follow a regular rhyme scheme and rhythm, creating a sense of harmony that mirrors nature's beauty. However, the final four lines deliberately break from this pattern, and this structural disruption enhances the emotional shock of the poem's conclusion.
Understanding the title
The title "The Morning Sun is Shining" immediately creates expectations of warmth, hope, and new beginnings. We naturally associate bright, sunny mornings with happiness and positive emotions, which is exactly what Schreiner wants us to feel initially.
Title Irony Revealed: The title contains figurative irony that becomes clear only when we reach the poem's end. The "sun" that should represent life and joy becomes meaningless to the speaker because her own "sun" - likely referring to her child - no longer shines (having died). This creates a powerful contrast between the natural world's continuing beauty and the speaker's personal darkness.
The title, combined with the first twelve lines, invites readers to experience the beauty of the South African landscape. Schreiner presents her Karoo homeland as blessed with green willow trees, golden sunshine, bubbling fountains, energetic locusts, birdsong, and the sweet scent of thorn trees in bloom.
Line-by-line analysis
Lines 1-2
Textual Analysis: Opening Lines "The morning sun is shining on / The green, green willow tree"
These opening lines establish the scene as the sun rises and the speaker sits enjoying the "world awakening" around her. The repetition of "green" emphasises both the colour's intensity and nature's purity. Green traditionally represents life, health, freshness, and abundant growth, immediately establishing a life-affirming tone. The sun itself also symbolises life and vitality.
Lines 3-4
Textual Analysis: Golden Imagery "And sends a golden sunbeam / To dance upon my knee"
These lines may contain a subtle reference to the speaker's child, as biographical information reveals that Schreiner's infant died just hours after birth. The personification of how the sun "bestows blessings" and "brings joy and amusement" emphasises morning beauty and contributes to the development of a cheerful, optimistic attitude.
The "golden" sunbeam continues the theme of precious, beautiful light that's associated with wealth and happiness.
Lines 5-6
Textual Analysis: Sound and Movement "The fountain bubbles merrily, / The yellow locusts spring"
Onomatopoeia describes the fountain's action as water spurts out, creating a carefree, joyful mood. The personification in line 5 emphasises happiness by giving the fountain human characteristics of delight and cheerfulness.
The energetic locusts in line 6 are active early in the morning, and their "yellow" colour continues the golden/yellow colour scheme that echoes the "golden sun" from line 3, creating visual consistency throughout the description.
Lines 7-8
Textual Analysis: Musical Quality "Of life and light and sunshine / The happy brown birds sing"
The movement of the locusts connects to the movement of light filtering through trees, with both sharing similar colours. The alliteration of "l" in "life and light" emphasises movement and creates a musical quality.
The repeated use of "and" in line 7 both emphasises the speaker's surroundings' beauty and suggests her spontaneous emotional response to nature's wonder. The repetition of the letter "l" in words like "life" and "light" creates an atmosphere of freedom and unburdened joy in the morning dawn.
The singing birds contribute to the atmosphere of happiness and celebration.
Lines 9-10
Textual Analysis: Earth as Person "The earth is clothed with beauty, / The air is filled with song"
Personification presents the earth as dressed in all her beauty and adornments, as if she's wearing lovely garments for a special occasion. Every area of the natural world is "clothed" and "filled" with beauty that the poet finds delightful.
Schreiner, as a South African writer, incorporates the landscape into her work by describing thorn trees as "sweet and robust." To demonstrate how abundant their scent is, she explains that the trees are covered in blossoms, and the golden thorn trees fill the breeze with sweet and powerful aromas.
Lines 11-12
Textual Analysis: Sensory Completion "The yellow thorn trees load the wind / With odours sweet and strong"
The trees are in full bloom, making it difficult for the wind to move through their heavy fragrance. The alliteration of "s" in "sweet" and "strong" emphasises how powerful and pleasant the morning fragrances are, adding to the poem's musical charm through these sibilant sounds.
The sensory appeal to smell completes the multi-sensory celebration of nature that began with sight and sound.
Lines 13-14
Textual Analysis: The Emotional Turn "There is a hand I never touch / And a face I never see"
Here the poem takes its dramatic emotional turn. The speaker references someone absent due to death - most likely her child who died shortly after birth. The assumption that this refers to her child is supported by biographical details about the poet's own loss.
These lines reveal that what appears to be a simple nature poem is actually about grief and mourning. The phrases "I never touch" and "I never see" express the permanent nature of loss - there will never be an opportunity for physical contact or visual connection again.
Lines 15-16
Textual Analysis: Rhetorical Despair "Now what is sunshine, what is song, / Now what is light to me?"
The speaker's tone completely changes to bitterness and sorrow. The rhetorical question challenges readers to consider her predicament: experiencing a beautiful day alone with no possibility of companionship or sharing the joy with her loved one.
The questions "What is sunshine? What is song? What is light?" express how meaningless natural beauty becomes when you cannot share it with someone you love. The poem's earlier celebration becomes hollow when faced with the reality of permanent separation.
Tone and mood
The poem demonstrates a dramatic shift in both tone and mood that creates its powerful emotional impact.
Tone and Mood Progression:
Lines 1-12 maintain a peaceful, happy tone while describing nature's beauty. The mood during this section is joyous and celebratory, filled with wonder at the natural world's splendour.
The final four lines change to a resentful, bitter tone expressing sorrow and regret, as captured in phrases like "a hand I never touched" (line 13) and "a face I never see" (line 14). The mood shifts to become sombre and solemn, reflecting deep grief and loss.
This dramatic change in tone and mood, compared to the previous three sections, creates a sharp emotional contrast that increases the impact of the poem's unexpected revelation about loss and separation.
Themes
The poem explores several interconnected themes that work together to create its emotional power:
Permanence of nature vs. transience of human life: Nature continues its cycles of beauty and renewal, while human life and relationships can be cut tragically short. The morning sun keeps shining regardless of personal grief.
Despair and grief: The speaker's loss transforms natural beauty into something meaningless, showing how grief can change our entire perception of the world around us.
Loneliness and isolation: Being unable to share beautiful experiences with loved ones highlights the fundamental human need for connection and companionship.
The futility of human relationships: The brevity of human life makes our connections precious but also tragically temporary, as demonstrated by the loss that haunts the speaker.
The poem's central intention is to demonstrate the difference between nature's enduring beauty and the actual suffering experienced by human beings, particularly when we face loss and separation from those we love.
Key Points to Remember:
- Structure matters: The poem's 16-line, 4-part structure builds beautiful imagery for 12 lines before dramatically shifting in the final 4 lines
- Title irony: "The Morning Sun is Shining" becomes ironic because the speaker's personal "sun" (her child) no longer shines
- Sensory progression: The poem moves through sight (lines 1-4), sound (5-8), and smell (9-12) before shifting to emotional pain
- Tone shift: The poem moves from joyful celebration of nature to bitter questioning about the meaning of beauty without someone to share it
- Central contrast: Nature's permanent beauty stands in stark opposition to the temporary, painful nature of human experience and loss