English · Chapter 19
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
Dylan Thomas (1914 to 1953) was a Welsh poet and broadcaster, born in Swansea, who became one of the most celebrated voices in twentieth-century British poetry and died in New York at the age of thirty-nine. "Every Morning I Wake" is not a stand-alone lyric but a prayer spoken by the Reverend Eli Jenkins, the gentle poet-preacher in Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood, first broadcast by the BBC and published in 1954, shortly after the poet's death. In the play the Reverend recites it as his sunset prayer at the close of the day in the small Welsh seaside town of Llareggub. It is a short devotional lyric of four quatrains in rhyming couplets, deliberately plain in language.
The prayer moves through four short stanzas, each a complete thought.
In the first stanza the Reverend describes his daily habit: "Every morning when I wake, / Dear Lord, a little prayer I make." His prayer is modest in scale and modest in wording. He asks God to keep "Thy lovely eye" on "all poor creatures born to die". This phrase is the heart of the poem. Every living thing, human or animal, is a creature, born already carrying its death, and therefore in need of watching over. The word "lovely" makes God's gaze warm and protective rather than stern.
The second stanza turns from morning to evening. Every evening "at sun-down" the Reverend asks "a blessing on the town". He then gives his reason in a homely, almost joking way: whether the townspeople last the night or not is, he says, always "touch-and-go". The phrase is everyday speech, the kind of thing one might say about a close game, and using it about survival itself is both funny and quietly serious. No one is guaranteed tomorrow.
The third stanza is a confession on behalf of the whole community. "We are not wholly bad or good / Who live our lives under Milk Wood." The people of the town, whose eccentricities, gossip, secret loves and small sins the play has shown across a single day, are neither saints nor villains but ordinary mixed human beings. The Reverend then expresses his faith that God will be "the first / To see our best side, not our worst". He imagines a merciful God who looks for the good in people before the bad.
The fourth stanza is the petition proper. "O let us see another day!" he asks, and prays that God will bless them all through the night. The closing lines picture the whole town bowing to the setting sun and saying good-bye to it, "but just for now". The farewell is temporary; the sun will return, and so, the prayer hopes, will the people to another day. The poem ends on hope, not fear.
Taken together, the four stanzas describe a whole cycle: morning prayer, evening blessing, honest self-assessment, and a hopeful goodnight. Although it is spoken by a fictional clergyman, the prayer speaks for anyone who is aware that life is fragile and who wants to face that fact with humility, humour and trust.