#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/09/07 -- Welcoming the Harvest Moon!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 45: September 7, 2022

 

 

Welcoming the Harvest Moon in Poetry & Prose

 

Editor’s Note

This week, we salute the Full Harvest Moon on Saturday, September 10 with an unpublished essay of mine and a selection of poems about the harvest season, which is beginning now across the American Midwest.

 

“Autumn Reflections”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

(Unpublished Article from September 2009)

                In November 2005, during the University’s Fall Break, I had the opportunity to revisit my elementary school in Bethalto, Illinois. Because of all the fond memories that I have associated with it, autumn was a great time of year for me to revisit my first Alma Mater. I had a delightful and surprising visit: delightful because I got to reconnect with a couple of my veteran teachers again, and surprising because the school is flourishing today even more so than when I was enrolled there in the 1970s.

 

The Great Seal of Bethalto, Illinois, where the Editor attended elementary school from 1973-1980. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

                When I was growing up in suburban southwest Illinois, the autumn season was a time of great excitement and anticipation. Even though my summer months were filled with all the freedom and adventure that children longed for during the school year, returning to my elementary school in early autumn was always a pleasure because my school days were perennially edutaining. As our class moved up through the ranks from kindergarten through the sixth grade, we learned about the three R’s (along with the sciences and the arts) from teachers who sang, played the piano, and strummed their guitars (with plenty of songs by Peter, Paul, and Mary!).

                We had many activities to look forward to during the fall term. Field trips to the local apple orchard and pumpkin patch; stories and songs about Johnny Appleseed; trick-or-treating for UNICEF; classroom parties to celebrate various autumn holidays; the annual chili supper; and making crafts for the holiday bazaar all combined to create an atmosphere charged with youthful energy and enthusiasm. The brisk autumn breezes, the falling multicolored leaves, and foreshortened daylight hours only added to the numinosity of the season.

                Everyone’s favorite part of the school day was the story time in early afternoon. After we had finished lunch and played outside in the autumn sunshine during the noon recess, our teachers would read aloud to us from classic children’s books by L. Frank Baum, Astrid Lindgren, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and many more. During the fall term, our teachers also gave us proverbs to memorize and poems to recite. One such poem that we learned has remained a favorite of mine through the years:

 

“Leaves” (Anonymous)

 

The leaves had a wonderful frolic.

They danced to the wind’s loud song.

They whirled, and they floated, and scampered.

They circled and flew along.

 

The Moon saw the little leaves dancing.

Each looked like a small brown bird.

The Man in the Moon smiled and listened,

And this is the song he heard.

 

“The North Wind is calling, is calling,

And we must whirl round and round,

And then, when our dancing is ended,

We’ll make a warm quilt for the ground.”

 

                To conclude, here’s a favorite song from my elementary school days, which my classmates and I enjoyed singing in the fall of the year. It was prominently featured in several episodes of Little House in the Prairie, one of the most popular TV series of the 1970s – and a fan favorite at my school!

 

“Bringing in the Sheaves”

By Knowles Shaw (1834-1878)

"He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." – Psalm 126:6 (KJV)

 

1. Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;

Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

 

Refrain:

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

 

2. Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,

Fearing neither clouds nor winter's chilling breeze;

By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

 

(Refrain)

 

3. Going forth with weeping, sowing for the Master,

Though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;

When our weeping's over, He will bid us welcome,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

 

(Refrain)

 

An Australian wheat field, which reminds the Editor of how a student teacher, trained in his kindergarten class under his teacher, Mrs. Meyer, later traveled to Australia to continue her training in the Sydney school district. (Photo Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Happy Fall, y’all! 😊

 

 

“Harvest Time”

By John Jay Chapman (1862-1933)

 

Behold, the harvest is at hand;

And thick on the encircling hills

The sheaves like an encampment stand,

Making a martial fairy-land

That half the landscape fills.

The plains in colors brightly blent

Are burnished by the standing grain

That runs across a continent.

In sheets of gold or silver stain

Or red as copper from the mine,

The oats, the barley, and the buckwheat shine.

 

Autumn has pitched his royal tent,

And set his banner in the field;

Where blazes every ornament

That beamed in an heraldic shield.

He spreads his carpets from the store

Of stuffs the richest burghers wore,

When velvet-robed, and studded o'er

With gems, they faced their Emperor.

 

A wind is in the laughing grain

That bends to dodge his rough caress,

Knowing the rogue will come again

To frolic with its loveliness.

And in the highways drifts a stream

Of carts, of cattle, and of men;

While scythes in every meadow gleam,

And Adam sweats again.

 

In the young orchard forms are seen

With throats thrown open to the breeze,

To reap the rye that lies between;

And sickles hang on apple-trees,

Half hidden in the glossy leaves,

And pails beside the reapers lie;

While sturdy yokels toss the sheaves,

And hats are cocked and elbows ply,

And blackbirds rise to cloud the sky

In swarms that chatter as they fly.

 

From field to field each shady lane

Is strown and traced with wisps of hay,

Where gates lie open to the wain

That creaks upon its toiling way.

And little children, dumb with pride,

Upon the rocking mountain ride,

While anxious parents warn;

And farm-boys guide the lazy team

Till it shall stand beneath the beam

That spans the gaping barn.

 

The harvest to its cavern sinks,

While shafts of sunlight probe the chinks

And fumes of incense rise.

Then, as the farmers turn the latch,

Good-natured Autumn smiles to watch

The triumph in their eyes.

His gifts, from many a groaning load,

Are heaved and packed, and wheeled and stowed

By gnomes that hoard the prize.

The grist of a celestial mill,

Which man has harnessed to his will,

In one bright torrent falls to fill

The greedy granaries.

 

Beneath that annual rain of gold

Kingdoms arise, expand, decay;

Philosophers their mind unfold

And poets sing, and pass away.

Forever turns the winnowing fan:

It runs with an eternal force,

As run the planets in their course

Behind the life of man.

Little we heed that silent power,

Save as the gusty chaff is whirled,

When Autumn triumphs for an hour,

And spills his riches on the world.

 

“September”

By Ellen P. Allerton (1835-1893)

 

    'Tis autumn in our northern land.

    The summer walks a queen no more;

    Her scepter drops from out her hand;

    Her strength is spent, her passion o'er.

    On lake and stream, on field and town,

    The placid sun smiles calmly down.

 

    The teeming earth its fruit has borne;

    The grain fields lie all shorn and bare;

    And where the serried ranks of corn

    Wave proudly in the summer air,

    And bravely tossed their yellow locks,

    Now thickly stands the bristling shocks.

 

    On sunny slope, on crannied wall

    The grapes hang purpling in the sun;

    Down to the turf the brown nuts fall,

    And golden apples, one by one.

    Our bins run o'er with ample store—

    Thus autumn reaps what summer bore.

 

    The mill turns by the waterfall;

    The loaded wagons go and come;

    All day I hear the teamster's call,

    All day I hear the threshers hum;

    And many a shout and many a laugh

    Comes breaking through the clouds of chaff.

 

    Gay, careless sounds of homely toil!

    With mirth and labor closely bent

    The weary tiller of the soil

    Wins seldom wealth, but oft content.

    'Tis better still if he but knows

    What sweet, wild beauty round him glows.

 

    The brook glides toward the sleeping lake—

    Now babbling over sinning stones;

    Now under clumps of bush and brake,

    Hushing its brawl to murmuring tones;

    And now it takes its winding path

    Through meadows green with aftermath.

 

    The frosty twilight early falls,

    But household fires burn warm and red.

    The cold may creep without the walls,

    And growing things lie stark and dead—

    No matter, so the hearth be bright

    When household faces meet to-night.

 

“The Harvest Moon”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

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 Moon, as photographed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)