Virginia Free Press

The Song of the Frog.

Now and then wandering over the every day columns of a newspaper, one comes upon a fresh, genuine bit of poetry like this, which we clip from the Boston Post:

Out-of-towners note the drowsy drone of the frog in the marshes and streams now, and though some of them are really unconscious of it, revel in the soothing monotony of such lowly music. It is nothing but a frog. But, then, how vividly that low-keyed sound, vibrating like a moist murmur on the still spring air at morning and at evening, wakens as with a thrill the old associations. Whatever sound is able to do that has native magic in its compass. Room for the frog that swells his bag-pipe in the wet meadows, then. Let him divide the air with the caroling robin in the apple-tree, each the extreme of that musical scale within which are included all the pleasant summer melodies. Spring throws her green vest over her shoulders while the young hermit of the mud is thus piping his dreamy strains. He heralds the change of garments, pitching his note low and soft, and, perhaps on a key that unlocks treasures of a vague melancholy.— Nature is wise above us all in her choosings. When she is making ready to break out in her very gayest garniture of leaf and flower, she takes care not to anticipate the surprise for the world of men, but lets the senses slide unconsciously along to the very edge, with the help of just such narcotizing melodies as none but the bedabbled frog can pour out from morning to night, and through the night till morning again, at the edge of the water.