A Collect for Thanksgiving Day. A Poem

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A COLLECT FOR THANKSGIVING DAY. » «, BY EDWIN MARKHAM, AUTHOR OF THE MAN WITH THE HOE, LIN-

COLN, AND OTHER POEMS," ETC.

(Reprinted in the Era by special permission of the author.)

[A recent critic says of Mr. Markham's verse: "One of its distinc-

tive features is its breadth of range. This gives it greatness — greatness unknown to singers of the flowery wr ay. He breaks open the secret of the poppy; he feels the pain in the bent back of labor; he goes down to the dim places of the dead; he reaches in heart-warm prayers to the Father of Life."]

I thank thee, Father, for this sky, Wherein thy little sparrows fly; For unseen hands that build and break The cloud-pavilions for my sake, This fleeting beauty, high and wild,

Toward which I wonder, as a child.

I thank thee for the strengthening hills, That give bright spirit to the rills; For blue peaks soaring up apart, To send down music on the heart; For tree-tops wavering soft and high, Writing their peace against the sky; For forest farings that have been; For this Fall rain that shuts me in, Giving to my low little roof The sense of home, secure, aloof.

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And thanks for morning's stir and light, And for the folding hush of night; For those high deities that spread The star-filled chasm overhead; For elfin chemistries that yield The green fires of the April field; For all the foam and surge of bloom; For leaves gone glorious to their doom, All the wild loveliness that can

Touch the immortal in a man.

Father of Life, I thank thee, too, For old acquaintance, near and true, For friends who came into my day And took the loneliness away; For faith that held on to the last; For all sweet memories of the past, Dear memories of my dead that send Long thoughts of life, and of life's end, That make me know the light conceals A deeper world than it reveals.