Thursday, November 27, 2008

Blesséd Thanksgiving

Look round our world; behold the chain of love.
Confirming all below and all above.
See plastic nature working to his end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form'd and impell'd its neighbor to embrace.
See matter next, with various life endu'd
Press to one center still, the gen'ral good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again;
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;
One all-extending all-preserving soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made beast in aid of man and man of beast;
All serv'd, all serving! nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

—Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man


And so it is.

Blesséd Be,
Michael Bright Crow