Happy Thanksgiving!

To all my American readers, wherever you happen to be. I hope your day is filled with joy, family and/or memories of great times together, gratitude and hope.

Your homeland is a bountiful one, with many opportunities for an ambitious person to make a fair living. So many people the world over dream of the freedom and prosperity Americans enjoy and would give a lot to be there.

You also have an amazing pool of talent; Americans have produced marvelous inventions, written great stories and verses. Here’s a verse from one of my favorite old-time poets, Edgar Guest. With his thousands of home-spun verses about everyday things, he was known as “the poet of the American people” and “the bard of America’s hopes and dreams.”

The Brighter Side

Though life has its trouble and life has its care
and often its dark days of sorrow,
there is always the hope that the sky will be fair
and the heart will be happy tomorrow.

There’s always the light of a goal just ahead,
a glimpse of the dream we’re pursuing,
in spite of the difficult pathway we tread
there is much it is good to be doing.

Time empties the purse of the pennies of youth,
the heart of its innocent laughter,
but gives in return just a few grains of truth
and the promise of more to come after.

There’s never a new day lived out to the end,
however life’s tempests may pitch us,
but what with a triumph, a joy, or a friend,
the swift, fleeting hours may enrich us.

There is so much to do and there’s so much to see
in spite of the troubles that fret us,
so much to wait for and so much to be
if only the future will let us —

that life with its burdens and life with its tears
and its heart-burning touches of sadness
still lures us all on to the end of our years
with its friendships, its loves, and its gladness.

From the book, Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest,
©1934 by the Reilly & Lee Co