Famous Holiday Poem

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet who lived from 1850-1919. She became known as a poet by those who lived in her home state of Wisconsin before she graduated high school. Although she came from a poor farm family, her mother enjoyed literature and encouraged her love of reading and writing. In this poem, she reminds the reader that if we focus on our worries, that’s all we’ll see, but when we start looking for our blessings (even in the midst of tough moments), we will be filled with joy. This poem is made up of octaves, or eight line stanzas.

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Famous Poem

Thanksgiving

Ella Wheeler Wilcox By more Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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.

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