I. 
O night, send up the harvest moon
     To walk about the fields,
And make of midnight magic noon
    On lonely tarns and wealds.

In golden ranks, with golden crowns,
    All in the yellow land,
Old solemn kings in rustling gowns,
    The shocks moon-charmed stand.

Sky-mirror she, afloat in space,
    Beholds our coming morn:
Her heavenly joy has such a grace,
    It ripens earthly corn;

Like some lone saint with upward eyes,
Lost in the deeps of prayer: 
The people still their prayers and sighs,
And gazing ripen there.

from Poetical Works
Originally published in 1893 by Chatto & Windus, London
 

Illustration by Leighton Isaacs
October, 2015

David Jack reads Songs of the Autumn Nights I: