The Harvest Moon

    It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
        And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
        And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
        Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
    Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
        And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
        Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
        With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
    All things are symbols: the external shows
        Of Nature have their image in the mind,
        As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
    The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
        Only the empty nests are left behind,
        And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.