I do love the morning.   I’ve always assumed there is just something intrinsically beautiful about mornings, but today as I strolled along in the cool shadows of late dawn, it struck me that there is also something different about me at that hour.

It’s a kind of nakedness of the soul, as if there has not been enough time to put on my invisible armour, my magic shield.  All my pores are open, to the morning sounds and scenes, to the beauty of the world.

I receive; absorb; sense; take in.   I am then at my most vulnerable, most receptive, most open to possibilities.   Only later do I digest and create.  As the day moves on, so do I.

The early morning experience in some way seems more profound and striking in urban environments – perhaps because there is so much more contrast between night and morning there than in a meadow out in the country.

I wonder if Wordsworth felt this way when he wrote about the “beauty of the morning”….

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

I don’t know about William W., but for me, as the day advances, the bird sounds disappear and the number of moving bodies and vehicles increases, my pores begin to close and my intellect begins to dominate.  My quiet sensing inner child is replaced by my Fearlessanalyst.