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.