Thanksgiving

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1896)

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 hang 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. Farseeing 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.