Dear Readers, as the pond is still frozen it’s a little early to be waiting for the frogs to put in an appearance, but hopefully as the weather warms I might soon see their little faces looking up hopefully from under the duckweed (which is currently under control, but I think that every year). And in the meantime, here is some amphibian-related poetry.

The Frog

By Hilaire Belloc

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As ‘Slimy skin,’ or ‘Polly-wog,’
Or likewise ‘Ugly James,’
Or ‘Gape-a-grin,’ or ‘Toad-gone-wrong,’
Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).

And here’s Norman MacCaig, a man who loves frogs almost as much as I do. This is so well-observed.

Norman MacCaig – Frogs

Frogs sit more solid

than anything sits. In mid-leap they are

parachutists falling

in a free fall. They die on roads

with arms across their chests and

heads high.

I love frogs that sit

like Buddha, that fall without

parachutes, that die

like Italian tenors.

Above all, I love them because,

pursued in water, they never

panic so much that they fail

to make stylish triangles

with their ballet dancer’s
legs.

And finally, here’s a poem by Goethe, no less, who clearly didn’t appreciate the vocal qualities of the frog…

The Frogs
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A pool was once congeal’d with frost;
The frogs, in its deep waters lost,

No longer dared to croak or spring;
But promised, being half asleep,
If suffer’d to the air to creep,

As very nightingales to sing.

A thaw dissolved the ice so strong,
They proudly steer’d themselves along,
When landed, squatted on the shore,
And croak’d as loudly as before.