THE HARVEST MOON

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-82

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes

And roofs of villages, on woodland crests

And their aerial neighbourhoods of nests

Deserted, on the curtained window-panes

Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

And harvest-fields, its mystic splendour rests!

Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,

With the last sheaves return the labouring 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.

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POETRY PATHWAYS

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