Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — The Harvest Moon

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