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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Poem-A-Day: The Harvest Moon by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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The Harvest Moon
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

A touch of cold in the Autumn night

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. 


Today's poem is in the public domain.

About this poem:

The Harvest Moon is the full moon that occurs closest to the Autumnal Equinox. (That's tonight!)

September 29, 2012
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Born on February 27, 1807 in Portland, Maine, Longfellow was described by Walt Whitman as a "poet of all sympathetic gentleness." 
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Poem-A-Day started as a National Poetry Month program in 2006, delivering daily poems from newly-published poetry titles.

 

Due to popular demand, Poem-A-Day became a year-round program in 2010, featuring original, never-before-published poems by contemporary poets on weekdays, and classic poems on weekends.

 

Browse the Poem-A-Day archive for selections since 2010. 


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