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The Harvest Moon: A Poem of Thanskgiving by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

John Tlumacki
/
Boston Globe

Here’s a poem for Thanksgiving:

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.

--

Happy Thanksgiving, from all of us at High Plains Public Radio.

--

Poem courtesy the Academy of American Poets.