Hark I hear a sound of croaking;
Frogs, in one attempt at joking
Joining all their voices, say,
"This is leap-year. Jump away!

"Leap, ye various deer and stags,
Chamois, on Helvetian crags.
Leap, ye goats, upon Welsh mountains,
Leap, ye cataracts and fountains.

"Leap, all monkeys and baboons
Squirrels, 'possums, and raccoons,
Antelopes, gazelles, and gnus,
Catamounts and kangaroos.

"Leopards, leap all you like fun,
Lions, tigers, every one;
Panthers, pumas, and jaguars.
Leap — if but against your bars.

"Horses, carrying men to hounds,
Leap all intervening bounds.
Fences, hedges, brooks, and dykes.
Gates, and palings crowned with spikes.

"Steed, careering in the race
O'er the flat or steeple chase.
Leap, without a baulk or check,
Lest thy rider risk his neck.

"Leap ye salmon, and ye trout.
From the purling streams leap out;
Leap, ye grasshoppers and fleas:
Hop and skip, ye mites in cheese.

"Yah, ye toads and tritons all,
Newts and slow-worms, creep and crawl;
Slug and snail and spider too —
Leap-year's not the year for you!"

We are bereft! O, lovely and beloved!
⁠God's angel was so swift we could not see
His falling shadow on thy smiling face,
⁠Till from Love's clasping arms he lifted thee!

Can this be thee, in this white hush of flowers,
⁠With greeting silence, as we weeping gaze?
Are these the cordial hands we held in ours —
⁠Dear busy hands, that worked all kindly ways?

We stand without. The door hath closed behind thee
⁠Into our Father's mansion, large and fair.
Enter, brave heart, serene, unselfish spirit;
⁠Grief is for us, but rapture waits thee there.

Out from the city's giant roar,
You wandered through the open door;
Paused at a little pail and spade
Across a tiny hillock laid;
Then noted on your dexter side
Some moneyed mourner's "love or pride;"
And so, beyond a hawthorn-tree,
Showering its rain of rosy bloom
Alike on low and lofty tomb,
You came upon it - suddenly.

How strange! The very grasses' growth
Around it seemed forlorn and loath;
The very ivy seemed to turn
Askance that wreathed the neighbor urn.
Sunk was the slab; the head declined,
And left the rails a wreck behind.
No name; you traced a "6," a "7,"
Part of "affliction" and of "Heaven;"
And then, - O Irony austere! -
You read in letters sharp and clear,
"Though lost to sight, to memory dear."

Menageries where sleuth-hounds caracole.
⁠Where jaguar phalanx and phlegmatic gnu
Fright ptarmigan and kestrels cheek by jowl
⁠With peewit and precocious cockatoo;

Gaunt seneschals, in crotchety cockades.
⁠With seine-nets trawl for porpoise in lagoons;
While scullions gauge erratic escapades
⁠Of madrepores in water-logged galleons:
 
Flamboyant triptychs groined with gherkins green.
⁠In reckless fracas with coquettish bream,
Ecstatic gurgoyles, with grotesque chagrin.
⁠Garnish the gruesome nightmare of my dream!

Under green boughs our Christmas keeping,
Bright berries fall, loved ones are sleeping,
Dark shadows on our hearth come creeping;
Christ bids us smile, but we are weeping.

He bids us smile, because He soweth
Our berries where His soft wind bloweth.
He saith, "Each one a fair tree groweth;"
We doubt, we hope: but our God knoweth.