The Harvest Moon
A poem in response to Samuel Palmer's painting 'The Harvest Moon'
![The Harvest Moon](/content/images/size/w2000/2018/08/Samuel_Palmer_-_The_Harvest_Moon_-_Google_Art_Project-1.jpg)
The Harvest Moon
Under the towering trees the tiny people move
like spirits all in white, stooping to cut and bind
the golden grain. This is no earthly scene;
the trees, although they turn with autumn’s colours,
are enchanted to a burnished brown
by wholeness, fullness in the harvest moon
and by the kindness of un-winking silver stars.
It is no August breeze that shivers in their leaves;
no normal evening chill. Each grain of corn
is rounded to the full. A ripeness glows among
the stalks, the still and garnered sheaves.
In quiet the unceasing shadows fall.
The white forms bend in rapt slow motion:
spell-cast, as in un-speaking endless dream.