Could this be the original poem pastiched by Dickens as Mrs Leo Hunter's 'Ode on an Expiring Frog' in Pickwick?
TO A FROG.
Poor being! wherefore dost thou fly?
Why seek to shun my gazing eye,
And palpitate with fear?
Indulge a passing trav'ler's sight,
And leap not on in vain affright;
No cruel foe is here.
I would but pause awhile, to view
Thy dappled coat of many a hue;
Thy rapid bound survey;
And see how well thy limbs can glide
Along the sedge-crown'd streamlet's tide,
Then journey on my way.
No savage sage am I, whose pow'r
Shall tear thee from thy rush-wove bow'r,
To feel th' unsparing knife;
No barb'rous schemes this hand shall try,
Nor, to prolong thy death, would I
Prolong thy little life.
Ah! let him not, whose wanton skill
Delights the mangled frog to kill,
The wreath of praise attain!
Philosophy abhors the heart
That prostitutes her sacred art,
To give one being pain. [Charles Snart, 'To a Frog', Elegant Extracts in Verse (2 vols, 1810) 2:141]
Newlan's Everyone in Dickens suggests the source may have been Horatio Smith's Gaieties and Gravities (1825) which contains the poem 'To a Log of Wood upon a Fire'. But I like this one better.
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