"Thanksgiving"

Thanksgiving

Ah, some give thanks for barns and garners heaped

Up to their raftered peaks with ripened grain;

Wan sufferers from drouth give thanks for rain;

Others―alas!―for passionate pleasures, steeped

In wine of lotus bloom. Some that have reaped

Their evil sowing in unbearable pain

Breathe thanks for one brief moment’s peace again;

The prisoner, for the ray of light that leaped

Athwart the darkness of his lonely cell,

Like Hope’s pale ghost. Beside her chaste, white bed

The maiden kneels, her thanks―like beads―to tell.

The old and poor give thanks for life and bread;

And the young mother, for the lips now pressed

To drain sweet strength from her glad, throbbing breast.

"Thanksgiving" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).