The Harvest Moon

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    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.