---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Edwin Markham
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 7
number: 2
published: 1903-12
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Edwin Markham, "A Collect for Thanksgiving Day. A Poem", *Improvement Era* 7, no. 2 (December 1903): 87–88.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0702unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0702unse
start_page: 87
end_page: 88
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1903-12)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0702unse
  publication_year: 1903
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1903, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# A Collect for Thanksgiving Day. A Poem

<!-- page:87 -->

—                            a




       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.

<!-- page:88 -->

—— —


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.