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-panesOf 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.

HenryWadsworth Longfellow