Happy Thanksgiving one and all

Thanksgiving

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850 - 1919

We walk on starry fields of white

   And do not see the daisies;

For blessings common in our sight

   We rarely offer praises.

We sigh for some supreme delight

   To crown our lives with splendor,

And quite ignore our daily store

   Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way

   Upon our thought and feeling.

They hand about us all the day,

   Our time from pleasure stealing.

So unobtrusive many a joy

   We pass by and forget it,

But worry strives to own our lives,

   And conquers if we let it.

There’s not a day in all the year

   But holds some hidden pleasure,

And looking back, joys oft appear

   To brim the past’s wide measure.

But blessings are like friends, I hold,

   Who love and labor near us.

We ought to raise our notes of praise

   While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise

   Of worry or of trouble;

Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,

   Who knows the mask is double.

But he who has the faith and strength

   To thank his God for sorrow

Has found a joy without alloy

   To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes

   Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;

The hours and days a silent phrase

   Of music we are living.

And so the theme should swell and grow

   As weeks and months pass o’er us,

And rise sublime at this good time,

   A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

This poem is in the public domain.