Discuss the poems 'Death of a Naturalist' and 'Personal Helicon' by Seamus Heaney

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Charlie Cowley                                                                     1st October

Discuss the poems ‘Death of a Naturalist’ and                                                          ‘Personal Helicon’ by Seamus Heaney

Both poems examined revolve around the youth of Seamus Heaney. In both poems the reader is told about Heaney’s memories as a child and his progressing memories as he grows up and understands his surroundings more from an adults perspective. This essay will look at and evaluate how the adult has been moulded from his childhood experiences, Discuss and explain Seamus Heaney’s use of language and tone to portray his personal feelings, as well as events that led him to the stage of life he was at and foreseeing from his child perspective and at the stage he was at when he wrote the poems.

                Children are naturally curious and interested about the things in life that they are unaware and unsure of; in the case of ‘death of a naturalist’ it is the aspects of nature, frogs, which, to him were just the ‘mammy and daddy frogs’ merely harmless creatures. The writer conveys that he took frogspawn from the pond, the frogs substantial home. The result of him sealing the frogspawn causes Heaney to suffer a guilty conscience, almost as if the frogs are coming to get him for taking their children, his reality of the frogs turns into an interpretation of evil, the object of fascination becomes ‘slime kings’ and ‘angry frogs’ the vision of them is that they will attack if anymore is taken.

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                   Again in the second poem ‘Personal Helicon’ tells about his curiosity for things this being wells. He would like to gaze long and mystically into the pale whiteness of his own reflection. He also liked getting dirty. The first verse appeals to sight and smell and is portrayed through the ‘smells of dank moss’ and the ‘dark drop and trapped sky’. The second to sound and sight and is portrayed using language like ‘rich crash’ and ‘saw no reflection’. The third appeals to touch and sight and is portrayed using ...

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