on curtained window panes

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.

-  The Harvest Moon

  by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow