Poems (Prescott)/The Oaten Pipe

by Mary Newmarch Prescott

THE OATEN PIPE

When the musical, piping frogs
 Begin to croak and chant,
In the marshes and in the bogs,
 In many a sweet spring haunt:

I think of the legend, hoary,
 Which little Dutch folk recite,—
How the nightingale's soul, says the story,
 Enters a frog in its flight.

And so when I hear the weird catch,
 Where the frogs alone take part,
I fancy I sometimes snatch
 A strain from the nightingale's heart.