HARVEST MOON/SMOKY SUN

"The Harvest Moon has come, and the earth replies all night like a deep drum.." -Ted Hughes

HARVEST MOON (Longfellow)  (1807-1882)

It is the Harvest Moon on gilded vanes

And roofs of villages, on woodland crests

And their aerial neighbourhoods 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 labouring 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 close,

Only the empty nests are left behind,

And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

Photographs 2022

                                          (King Spencer on his flowerpot in the morning sun)