Sonnet Liv. Idle Hours.

YE idle hours of summer, not in vain, To one by Nature's beauty fed, ye pass — Though sending through the mental camera glass No philosophic lesson to the brain, But only pictures fair of shaded lane, Of dappled cows knee-deep in meadow grass; Bright hill-tops with their sloping forest mass, Or barn-roofs glimmering gray across the plain. Earth, air, and water, and the sacred skies Have something still to tell, not less, I ween, Than famous books the learned sages prize, Weighted with thought abstract and logic keen, Where Concord pores with metaphysic eyes O'er vasty deeps of the unknown and unseen.