Under the Harvest Moon
Under the harvest moon,When the soft silverDrips shimmeringOver the garden nights,Death, the gray mocker,Comes and whispers to youAs a beautiful friendWho remembers.
Under the summer rosesWhen the flagrant crimsonLurks in the duskOf the wild red leaves,Love, with little hands,Comes and touches youWith a thousand memories,And asks youBeautiful, unanswerable questions.
Words in this poem
- shimmering n.
- A gleam or glimmering.
- flagrant a.
- Flaming; inflamed; glowing; burning; ardent. [L. flagrans, -antis, p.pr. of flagrate to burn, akin to Gr. flagrant. Cf. Flame, Phlox.]
- unanswerable a.
- Not answerable; irrefutable; conclusive; decisive; as, he have an unanswerable argument.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Under the Harvest Moon is in the public domain. This text is taken from Chicago Poems, Wikisource; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Carl Sandburg, Under the Harvest Moon, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/under-the-harvest-moon.html, id L28939.
Form and metre
Under the Harvest Moon is 17 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 2 -----A-A- roses · crimson · dusk · leaves · hands · youA · memories · youA · questions
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Under the harvest moon, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| When the soft silver | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Drips shimmering | 4 | ·/˘˘ |
| Over the garden nights, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Death, the gray mocker, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Comes and whispers to you | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| As a beautiful friend | 6 | ··/˘˘· |
| Who remembers. | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| Under the summer roses | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| When the flagrant crimson | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| Lurks in the dusk | 4 | ···· |
| Of the wild red leaves, | 5 | ····· |
| Love, with little hands, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Comes and touches you | 5 | ··/˘· |
| With a thousand memories, | 7 | ··/˘/˘˘ |
| And asks you | 3 | ··· |
| Beautiful, unanswerable questions. | 10 | /˘˘··˘˘˘/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.