Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Short Harvest Poems

Famous Short Harvest Poems. Short Harvest Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Harvest short poems


by Carl Sandburg
 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.



by Yosa Buson
 Harvest moon--
called at his house,
he was digging potatoes.

by Henry David Thoreau
 On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has pass'd
Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,
My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind
And of such fineness as October airs,
There after harvest could I glean my life
A richer harvest reaping without toil,
And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will
In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

by Hilaire Belloc
 Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days 
Gleaned by the year in autumn's harvest ways, 
With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember, 
Some crimson poppy of a late delight 
Atoning in its splendor for the flight 
Of summer blooms and joys­
This is September.

by Walt Whitman
 AS I watch’d the ploughman ploughing, 
Or the sower sowing in the fields—or the harvester harvesting, 
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies: 
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)



by Carl Sandburg
 I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

by John Betjeman
 I made hay while the sun shone.
My work sold.
Now, if the harvest is over
And the world cold,
Give me the bonus of laughter
As I lose hold.

Autumn  Create an image from this poem
by Siegfried Sassoon
 October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves 
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood 
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves 
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud 
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown 
Along the westering furnace flaring red. 
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, 
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent and soft and slow
Descends the snow.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Strike, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail 
May’s beauty massacre and wisp?d wild clouds grow 
Out on the giant air; tell Summer No, 
Bid joy back, have at the harvest, keep Hope pale.

by Kathleen Raine
 Where is the seed 
Of the tree felled, 
Of the forest burned, 
Or living root 
Under ash and cinders? 
From woven bud 
What last leaf strives 
Into life, last 
Shrivelled flower?
Is fruit of our harvest,
Our long labour
Dust to the core?
To what far, fair land 
Borne on the wind 
What winged seed 
Or spark of fire 
From holocaust 
To kindle a star?

by John Montague
 A feel of warmth in this place.
In winter air, a scent of harvest.
No form of prayer is needed,
When by sudden grace attended.
Naturally, we fall from grace.
Mere humans, we forget what light
Led us, lonely, to this place.

by Ogura Hyakunin Isshu
Tenchi Tenno

Coarse the rush-mat roof
Sheltering the harvest-hut
Of the autumn rice-field;--
And my sleeves are growing wet
With the moisture dripping through.

by Louise Gluck
 Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
Sleep in their blue yoke,
The fields having been
Picked clean, the sheaves
Bound evenly and piled at the roadside
Among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
Of harvest or pestilence
And the wife leaning out the window
With her hand extended, as in payment,
And the seeds
Distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

by Emily Dickinson
 The Products of my Farm are these
Sufficient for my Own
And here and there a Benefit
Unto a Neighbor's Bin.

With Us, 'tis Harvest all the Year
For when the Frosts begin
We just reverse the Zodiac
And fetch the Acres in.

by Louise Bogan
 She has no need to fear the fall 
Of harvest from the laddered reach 
Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing 
 From the steep beach.

Nor hold to pain's effrontery 
Her body's bulwark, stern and savage, 
Nor be a glass, where to forsee 
 Another's ravage.

What she has gathered, and what lost, 
She will not find to lose again. 
She is possessed by time, who once 
 Was loved by men.

by Kathleen Raine
 Day is the hero's shield,
Achilles' field,
The light days are the angels.
We the seed.

Against eternal light and gorgon's face
Day is the shield
And we the grass
Native to fields of iron, and skies of brass.

by Richard Crashaw
 See here an easy feast that knows no wound,
That under hunger's teeth will needs be sound;
A subtle harvest of unbounded bread,
What would ye more? Here food itself is fed.

by John McCrae
 The earth grows white with harvest; all day long
The sickles gleam, until the darkness weaves
Her web of silence o'er the thankful song
Of reapers bringing home the golden sheaves.

The wave tops whiten on the sea fields drear,
And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap;
But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear
The half-hushed sobbing of the hearts that weep.

by John McCrae
 If night should come and find me at my toil,
When all Life's day I had, tho' faintly, wrought,
And shallow furrows, cleft in stony soil
Were all my labour: Shall I count it naught

If only one poor gleaner, weak of hand,
Shall pick a scanty sheaf where I have sown?
"Nay, for of thee the Master doth demand
Thy work: the harvest rests with Him alone."

by Carl Sandburg
 RED gold of pools,
Sunset furrows six o’clock,
And the farmer done in the fields
And the cows in the barns with bulging udders.

Take the cows and the farmer,
Take the barns and bulging udders.
Leave the red gold of pools
And sunset furrows six o’clock.
The farmer’s wife is singing.
The farmer’s boy is whistling.
I wash my hands in red gold of pools.

by Emily Dickinson
 A Solemn thing within the Soul
To feel itself get ripe --
And golden hang -- while farther up --
The Maker's Ladders stop --
And in the Orchard far below --
You hear a Being -- drop --

A Wonderful -- to feel the Sun
Still toiling at the Cheek
You thought was finished --
Cool of eye, and critical of Work --
He shifts the stem -- a little --
To give your Core -- a look --

But solemnest -- to know
Your chance in Harvest moves
A little nearer -- Every Sun
The Single -- to some lives.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry