Harvest Home Festivals

In summer time it doth seem good
To seek the shade of the green wood,
For it doth banish all our care
When we gaze on scene so fair.

And birds do here in branches sing
So merrily in early spring,
And lovingly they here do pair
Their mutual joys together share.

Here nature’s charming, never rude,
Inspiring all with happy mood,
Tables had choice fruits of season,
And we too had feast of reason.

To dinner table all did march
Through evergreen triumphal arch,
On top the Union Jack it floats,
On each side sheaves of wheat and oats.

Great pumpkins and big ears of corn,
They do this rural arch adorn,
We are reminded now ’tis fall,
And boys enjoy game of baseball.

With joy at night each one did gaze
At the mighty bonfire’s blaze,
The tree leaves shone like silver bright,
The lanterns too were pleasing sight.

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L24.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Harvest Home Festivals.” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/harvest-home-festivals/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by James McIntyre