The Toad, Not Shaken....

[Meanderer]

The scuttlebutt, in the literary world has always been that Robert Frost's famous poem had a few typos in his first typewritten draft. ....but we will not take that road in this, our Toad thread!

 

[Meanderer]

Toads​

by Philip Larken

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losers, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
They seem to like it.
CONTINUE

‘Toad’ by Norman MacCaig​

Toad

Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse
squeeze under the rickety door and sit,
full of satisfaction, in a man’s house?

You clamber towards me on your four corners-
right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot.

I love you for being a toad,
for crawling like a Japanese wrestler,
and for not being frightened.

I put you in my purse hand, not shutting it,
and set you down outside directly under
every star.

A jewel in your head? Toad,
you’ve put one in mine,
a tiny radiance in a dark place.

 

[Aunt Bea]

 

[Meanderer]

 

[Meanderer]

ON THE ......

 

[Meanderer]

Shakespeare's much-maligned toads and frogs​

 

[Meanderer]

 

[Meanderer]

 

[Meanderer]

 

[MoBeans]

Thats so funny I almost croaked

 

[Meanderer]

The Frog by Robert Frost

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill 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).

 

[Gardenlover]

The frog in my pond