Episode 10: the Harvest Moon

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 neighboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the eaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,
Only he empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.