The Harvest Moon by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The harvest moon lights villages, deserted nests, windows of rooms where children sleep, lanes and fields as wagons return with the last sheaves. The speaker connects nature’s seasonal changes with images in the mind, noting the departed songbirds, empty nests and quail calling among the sheaves.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Sonnet, Nature Poetry, Meditative Poetry · 158 words
First lines
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.
Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen rhymed lines turn from a moonlit harvest landscape to reflection on nature’s images in the mind.
- Nature Poetry — Moonlight, woodland nests, departing songbirds and quail among the sheaves provide the poem’s concrete subjects.
- Meditative Poetry — The speaker considers flowers, fruits and falling leaves as outward forms with corresponding images in the mind.
Tags
moonlight · autumn · harvest · birds · seasonal change · sonnet
What this Textopian page supports
The Harvest Moon is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Nature Poetry, Meditative Poetry
- Length: 158 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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