THANKSGIVING FOR OUR TASK

The sickle is dulled of the reaping and the threshing-floor is bare;

The dust of night’s in the air.

The peace of the weary is ours:

All day we have taken the fruit and the grain and the seeds of the flowers.

The ev’ning is chill,

It is good now to gather in peace by the flames of the fire.

We have done now the deed that we did for our need and desire:

We have wrought our will.

And now for the boon of abundance and golden increase,

And immurèd peace,

Shall we thank our God?

Bethink us, amid His indulgence, His terrible rod?

Shall we be as the maple and oak,

Strew the earth with our gold, giving only bare boughs to the sky?

Nay, the pine stayeth green while the Winter growls sullenly by,

And doth not revoke

For soft days or stern days the pledge of its constancy.

Shall we not be

Also the same through all days,

Giving thanks when the battle breaks on us, in toil giving praise?

O Father who saw at the dawn,

That the folly of Pride would be the lush weed of our sin,

There is better than that in our hearts, O enter therein,

A light burneth, though wan

And weak be the flame, yet it gloweth, our Humility!

Ah, how can it be

Trimmed o’ the wick,

And replenished with oil to burn brightly and golden and quick?

For deep in our hearts

We wish to be thankful through lean years and fat without change,

Knowing that here Thou hast set for the spirit a range:

We would play well our parts,

Making America throb with the building of souls and the glory of good;

Yea, and we would,

And before the last Autumn we will

Build a temple from ocean to ocean where deeds never still

Melodiously shall proclaim

Thanksgiving forever that Thou hast set here to our hand

So wondrous a mystical harvest, that Thou dost demand

Sheaves bound in Thy name,

Yea, supersubstantial sheaves of strong souls that have grown

Fain to be known

As the corn of Thine occident field:

O Yielder of All, can America worthily thank Thee till such be her yield?

In the mellowing light

Of the goldenest days that precede the gray days of the year,

We sing Thee our harvesting song and we pray Thee to hear,

In the midst of Thy might:

Labor is given to us,

Let us give thanks!

Power worketh through us,

Let us give thanks!

Not for what we have

(So might speak a slave),

Not for the garnering,

Gratefully we sing,

But for the mighty thing

We must do, travailing!

For our task and for our strength;

For the journey and its length;

For our dauntless eagerness;

For our humbling weariness;

For these, for these, O Father,

Let us give thanks!

For these, O Mighty Father,

Take Thou our thanks!

The Forum Shaemas OSheel

A LIKENESS
Portrait Bust of an Unknown, Capitol, Rome

In every line a supple beauty—

The restless head a little bent—

Disgust of pleasure, scorn of duty,

The unseeing eyes of discontent.

I often come to sit beside him,

This youth who passed and left no trace

Of good or ill that did betide him,

Save the disdain upon his face.

The hope of all his House, the brother

Adored, the golden-hearted son,

Whom Fortune pampered like a mother;

And then—a shadow on the sun.

Whether he followed Cæsar’s trumpet,

Or chanced the riskier game at home

To find how favor played the strumpet

In fickle politics at Rome;

Whether he dreamed a dream in Asia

He never could forget by day,

Or gave his youth to some Aspasia,

Or gamed his heritage away;

Once lost, across the Empire’s border

This man would seek his peace in vain;

His look arraigns a social order

Somehow entrammelled with his pain.

“The dice of gods are always loaded”;

One gambler, arrogant as they,

Fierce, and by fierce injustice goaded,

Left both his hazard and the play.

Incapable of compromises,

Unable to forgive or spare,

The strange awarding of the prizes

He had no fortitude to bear.

Tricked by the forms of things material—

The solid-seeming arch and stone,

The noise of war, the pomp imperial,

The heights and depths about a throne—

He missed, among the shapes diurnal,

The old, deep-travelled road from pain,

The thoughts of men which are eternal,

In which, eternal, men remain.

Ritratto d’ignoto; defying

Things unsubstantial as a dream—

An Empire, long in ashes lying—

His face still set against the stream.

Yes, so he looked, that gifted brother

I loved, who passed and left no trace,

Not even—luckier than this other—

His sorrow in a marble face.

Scribner’s Willa Sibert Cather