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Thanksgiving Thoughts

From the Omaha Daily Bee, November 27, 1913. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

Come! Let us take our prated prayers, review them and examine;
Are they because our feast is full while others share a famine?
Are they because we ride the road which others pick and shovel?
Are they because our walls are wide while others crowd a hovel?
Are they because our limbs are swathed, while some are rawed by weather?
Or are they only for the gifts we all may share together?

Thanks are not thanks which only make another’s want our measure,
Or only by another’s pain to gauge a selfish pleasure.
Thanks are not thanks whose words are stones to pelt a lesser brother,
Or that we make our blessedness the burden of another.
Thanks are not thanks for tender palms that others be as leather;
Thanks are but thanks for such good gifts as all hands hold together.

Give us to know the larger day which deprecates Thanksgiving,
Save for the universal feast which spreads for all the living.
Give us to pray the larger prayer whereby our senses quicken
And sees no gain in any good whereby another’s stricken.
Give us to scorn the captured spoil which asks no why or whether.
Give us to toil toward that gain which all may share together.

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