Annie’s mailbox: Capturing the spirit of Thanksgiving
Dear readers: Happy Thanksgiving. We hope you are fortunate enough to be spending the holiday with family and friends. And our personal thanks to those who are spending the day volunteering at shelters and soup kitchens, or going to a nearby nursing home and bringing conversation and attention to the residents. Bless you for your kindness and generosity. Here is a poem that captures the spirit of the day:
Thanksgiving
by 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 splendour,
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 labour 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.
Annie’s Snippet (credit the late Johnny Carson): Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.
Email questions to anniesmailbox@comcast.net