The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1917-11-24
AS SUNG BY POETS
Old and New Thanksgiving
Sentiments Worth
Recording.

Recording.
IN ABINDRANATH TAGORE, the
~ Hindu-English poet, recently
Y contributed to the London
Times the following verses on
Thanksgiving" which are as unlike
the conventional Thanksgiving poem
In sentiment as they are in form:
Those who walk on the path of pride
crushing the lowly life under their tread,
spreading their footprints in blood
upon the tender green of thy earth.
Let them rejoice, and thank thee, Lord,
for the day is theirs.
But thou hast done we'll in leaving me
with the humble
whose doom 1t Is to suffer
and bear the burden of power,
and hide their faces and stifle their sobs
in the dark.
For every throb of their pain
has pulsed in the secret depth of thy
night, =
and every insult has been gathered
in thy great silence,
And the morrow Is theirs.
" ouu, ilSo uPOu tHc DleSuluk ncaTIS
blossoming in flowers of the morning
and the torchlight revelry of pride
hiding in its own aisles!
There is, Of course, nothing new In
dissent from that SNUG piety that re-
turns thanks because its, possessor is
mot as other men are" be it In world
ly possessions, in bodily health, in
mental equipment or ven in moral
inheritance. Robert Burns long ago
Satirized n aspect of such self-cOm-
placence in 'The Selkirk Grace:
Some haze meat and Gamma eat,
And some wad eat that want It;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sac the Lord be thankit,
William Blake, In one of those
quantity phrased little poems of his
that have almost the flavor of esoteric
wisdom, declares:
Since all the riches of this world
May be gifts from the devil and earthly
kings,
I should suspect that I worshiped the
If I thanked my God for worldly things.
The countless gold of a merry heart,
The rubies and pearls of a loving eye,
Inc IDEAL man never can bring to the
mart,
Nor the cunning hoard up in his treas
ury.
And in recent years Edmund Vance
Cooke, a poet of whom Cleveland, the
sixth city," should be proud, has
sung: .
We thank thee. Yea, in the even tone
Of those who are glad of the goods they
own.
We thank thee. Yea, that thou hast pre-
ferred
And blessed us more than the common
herd.
We thank thee, part with the hearts in
t~ention,
But most, let US own, with the lips con-
vention.
W thank thee" Lord! What a selfish
prayer!
Thanks-while a beggar's breast is bare!
Thanks that our own full feast Is spread
While another creature is lacking bread!
Thanks that our full fed blood runs warm,
While a starveling baby breasts the
stormi
There Is certainly no faint of Tar
tuffe or Pecksniff in the reason that
William Ernest Henley gives for
thankfulness in his "Invictus," but it
has something of pharisaical AFRO
gance Notwithstanding:
Out of the night that covers me.
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
Algernon Charles S%winburne, in
"The Garden Of Proserpine" (from
which, by the way, Henley seems to
have borrowed his whatever gods
may be"), expresses a sentiment that
in certain moods has an appeal to
many men:
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
But, after all, there is a healthier
appeal than Swinburne's, and an ap-
peal to a greater number of normal
men and women, in such fine odes as
Lnat which the late Hezekiah Butter
worth wrote in celebration of the first
Thanksgiving in Boston Harbor":
The Arabella leads the song
The Mayfiower sings below,
That erst the Pilgrims bore along
The Plymouth reefs of snow,
oh, never be that psalm forgot
That rose Ger Boston Bay,
when Winthrop sang, and Endicott
And Saltonstall hat day:
Praise we the Lord with fervent lins'
traise we the Lord today!'