For centuries, poets in all cultures have offered eloquent thanks and praise for the people and things of this world. The voices collected here range from Sappho, Horace, and Rumi to Shakespeare and Milton, from Wordsworth, Rilke, Yeats, Rossetti, and Dickinson to Czesław Miłosz, Langston Hughes, Yehuda Amichai, Anne Sexton, W. S. Merwin, Maya Angelou, and many more. Poems of Gratitude includes beloved favorites, classics from China and Japan; traditional Navajo, Aztec, Inuit, and Iroquois poems; devotional lyrics drawn from the major religious traditions of the world.
The result is a splendidly varied literary feast that honors and affirms the joy in our lives while acknowledging the sorrows and losses that give that joy its keenness. this beautiful volume belongs at every family gathering and dinner party with friends, a fun book to be passed around the table, and an indispensable resource for making toasts.
Poems of Gratitude collects more than 160 short poems, including:
• “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost
• “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
• “Thanks” by W.S. Merwin
• “The Selkirk Grace” by Robert Burns
• “Welcome Morning” by Anne Sexton
• “Thanks in Old Age” by Walt Whitman
• “To My Mother” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “O My Friends” by Rainer Maria Rilke
• “Eagle Poem” by Joy Harjo
• “Prayer” by Maya Angelou
• “Harvest Sunset” by Carl Sandburg
Printed on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket
