I’m winding down. The daylight is winding down. Only the night is wound up tight. And ticking with unpaused breath. Sweet night, sweet, steady, reliable, uncomplicated night.
September moon, two days from full, slots up from the shouldered hill. There is no sound as the moon slots up, no thorns in its body. Invisible, the black gondola floats through down-lid and drowning stars.
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon, Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing, A vast balloon, Till it takes off, and sinks upward To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon. The harvest moon has come, Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon. And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.So people can’t sleep, So they go out where elms and oak trees keep A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush. The harvest moon has come!And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep Stare up at her petrified, while she swells Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing Closer and closer like the end of the world.Till the gold fields of stiff wheat Cry `We are ripe, reap us!’ and the rivers Sweat from the melting hills.
Illustration for The Reapers Song to the Harvest Moon, The Illustrated London News, 4 September 1858.
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.
Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers.
Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
Carl Sandburg (1878 –1967)
All is safely gathered In
At harvest time in school we sang the harvest hymn:
“All is safely gathered in Ere the winter storms begin”
– although we could all see the wheat and barley fields still uncut. Ritual, not reality. No matter.
John Clare
And finally to John Clare whose Shepherd’s Calendar for September reminds us of a time when gathering the harvest involved everyone. The village empties out and all hands to the fields. It’s a communal effort followed by communal celebration. The success of the harvest made the difference between survival and starvation in the coming winter.
September
Harvest awakes the morning still And toils rude groups the valleys fill Deserted is each cottage hearth To all life save the crickets mirth Each burring wheel their sabbath meets Nor walks a gossip in the streets The bench beneath its eldern bough Lined oer with grass is empty now Where blackbirds caged from out the sun Could whistle while their mistress spun. All haunt the thronged fields still to share The harvests lingering bounty there As yet no meddling boys resort About the streets in idle sport The butterflye enjoys his hour And flirts unchaced from flower to flower And humming bees that morning calls From out the low huts mortar walls Which passing boy no more controuls Flye undisturbed about their holes And sparrows in glad chirpings meet Unpelted in the quiet street
extract from The Shepherd’s Calendar by John Clare (1793-1864)
Harvest Time, Foster, Myles Birket (1825-99);The Harvest, Vincent van Gogh, 1888Windmill at Latem at Moonlight, 1900, Albijn van den Abeele (1835-1918)
Wonderful paintings and poems. It's a great time of year. How good it must have been when it was all a community event.
We are so lucky to have the poetry of John Clare as he chronicled the life of the village. It is easy to see his poetry as a record of what happens to “indigenous people” when they are “colonised” by “capitalism” (excuse the cliched language.) In this situation it was the inhabitants of Clare’s home village of Helpston in Northamptonshire.
But to your point – the harvest was a communal effort. And so was the celebration. Everyone took part. Different times.
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Wonderful paintings and poems. It's a great time of year. How good it must have been when it was all a community event.
We are so lucky to have the poetry of John Clare as he chronicled the life of the village. It is easy to see his poetry as a record of what happens to “indigenous people” when they are “colonised” by “capitalism” (excuse the cliched language.) In this situation it was the inhabitants of Clare’s home village of Helpston in Northamptonshire.
But to your point – the harvest was a communal effort. And so was the celebration. Everyone took part. Different times.