Death of the Naturalist

Seamus Heany was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland on April 13, 1939. His family didn’t have the funds to send him to college, but a scholarship allowed him to attend college and live on campus. In 1962, Heaney published his first poem. By the end of 1979 he had published five more poetry collections and moved to the United States where he worked at Harvard, Fordham University and Queen’s University. Here is an example of one of his poem and how I interpreted it.

Death of the Naturalist

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
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.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

Heaney’s poem ‘Death of a Naturalist’ focuses on his experience of collecting and watching frogspawn as a child, and his reaction when the spawn turned into frogs. Naturalist could mean when you are a child and carefree. At that age nature doesn’t disgust you but as time goes on curiosity leaves a child. Then, going into adulthood nature disgusts a person more. We discussed in class that stanza one is more about fascination and understanding, like what would be seen through a child’s eyes. It expresses curiosity and uses very descriptive words that paint the picture of wanting to learn more and investigate. In the first couple lines it describes the image of decay. For example, the phrases: ‘flax-dam festered’ and ‘heavy headed’. At the end of stanza one it talks about a childlike account of how the schoolteacher, Miss Walls, taught Heaney’s class about frogs and frogspawn.

Stanza two is more about the unpleasantness of the scene being described. This would relate to what would be seen through an adult’s eyes. It’s less about discovering and curiosity and more about disgust and wanting to run away. In the beginning of the stanza it uses unpleasant phrases such as: ‘rank / with cowdung’, ‘angry frogs’, and ‘invaded the flax-dam’. The very last line, ‘that if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it’ describes the worst place a child’s imagination could take them. It’s where the spawn actually becomes powerful enough to grab the child.