bask: the frogs, When come the pale, cold twilights of the spring, Like distant sleigh-bells through the meadows ring. The school-boy comes on holidays to take The musk-rat in its hole, or kill the snake, Or fish for bull-heads in the pond at night. The hog-snout's swollen corpse, with belly white, I find upon the footway through the sedge, Trodden by tramps along the water's edge. Not thine the breath of the salt marsh below Where, when the tide is out, the mowers go Shearing the oozy plain, that reeks with brine More tonic than the incense of the pine. Thou art the sink of all uncleanliness, A drain for slaughter-pens, a wilderness Of trenches, pockets, quagmires, bogs where rank The poison sumach grows, and in the tank The water standeth ever black and deep Greened o'er with scum: foul pottages, that steep And brew in that dark broth, at night distil Malarious fogs bringing the fever chill. Yet grislier horrors thy recesses hold: The murdered peddler's body five days old Among the yellow lily-pads was found In yonder pond: the new-born babe lay drowned And throttled on the bottom of this moat, Near where the negro hermit keeps his boat; Whose wigwam stands beside the swamp; whose meals It furnishes, fat pouts and mud-spawned eels. Even so thou hast a kind of beauty, wild, Unwholesome—thou the suburb's outcast child, Behind whose grimy skin and matted hair Warm nature works and makes her creature fair. Summer has wrought a blue and silver border Of iris flags and flowers in triple order Of the white arrowhead round Beaver Pond, And o'er the milkweeds in the swamp beyond Tangled the dodder's amber-colored threads. In every fosse the bladderwort's bright heads Like orange helmets on the surface show. Richer surprises still thou hast: I know The ways that to thy penetralia lead, Where in black bogs the sundew's sticky bead Ensnares young insects, and that rosy lass, Sweet Arethusa, blushes in the grass. Once on a Sunday when the bells were still, Following the path under the sandy hill Through the old orchard and across the plank That bridges the dead stream, past many a rank Of cat-tails, midway in the swamp I found A small green mead of dry but spongy ground, Entrenched about on every side with sluices Full to the brim of thick lethean juices, The filterings of the marsh. With line and hook Two little French boys from the trenches took Frogs for their Sunday meal and gathered messes Of pungent salad from the water-cresses. A little isle of foreign soil it seemed, And listening to their outland talk, I dreamed That yonder spire above the elm-tops calm Rose from the village chestnuts of La Balme. Yes, many a pretty secret hast thou shown To me, O Beaver Pond, walking alone On summer afternoons, while yet the swallow Skimmed o'er each flaggy plash and 

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