I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too,
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
The aggression of the frogs and the maturation of the adolescent poet are the essence of the poem. Note the realistic, brutal, descriptive language in the second stanza compared to the childish language of the first. He has clearly matured. The frog spawn and the boy are both growing up; both in a phase of aggression and cynicsm. The world is now hostile, not benign. This is important to understand the poem at a deeper level.
Death of A Naturalist