As thepoem progresses into the following stanza there is a destince change in the mood of the peom.
‘The air was thick with a bass chorus’
Agaijn Heaney uses rich imagery to explain his point. Phrases such as ‘angry frogs’ tell how his feeling towards them as a child has changed and now they seem ‘angry’ rather then the ‘nimble swimming tadpoles’ that thery were before. Heaney expresses this change in nature as the change of season as wel for him as the actual changin from childhood into adult life. Once innocent and stimulating images have changed into aggressive and threatening things.
The title of this poem in itself holds the theme strongly. ‘Death of a Naturalist’ suggests his interest in nature dying and being replaced with more adult feelings.
‘Death of a Naturalist’ also liks closely to Heaney’s poem ‘Blackburry picking’. The poem follows the similar two stanza approach, with the first being full of childhood positives and the second folloing on to more nagative images n nature.
This poem however focuses in more on nature itself and his perspecive.
‘you ate that first one and its fleesh was sweet’
Heaney remanisses on how he would go blackburrying and the experiences that he had while he was there. By using the technique of using all the positive images first Heaney is able to exaggerate the negative images in the mind of thereader.
This is achieved in the second stanza.
It wasn’t fair, that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.’
The childlike, yet powerful images used in this stanza show him laerning of the nagatives that are in nature. His obveous dissapointment are apparent and the reader is therefore able to sypmathise with Heaney and in life things often loose thire sense of being wonderous and adventerous as you mature and grow up.
Heany’s poem ‘Poem’ is especially about maturing and how it changes the way th you view things in the world.
‘I’d strip a layer of sod’s to build the wall…
Yearly, admitting these, the sod would fall’
Here Heaney explains how as a child he would build things that always ended up falling down, and by recalling childhood memory, saw the faults in nature and things often going wrong, but hgim not really noticing as a child.
The poem is adressesd to his wife and tell how she must help him to mature.
‘Love, you shall perfect for me this child’
the poem is about realisation of the need to grow up. No langer can he build things that will fall down. Heaney explains that thins such as love are to be immortal and last much longer than the items that he delt with as a child. Now, he must build things that will last and grow up. As he comments: ‘And square the circle’. Things must now be orderly and he must fit into adult life. He explains that she will be the one that will help him to achieve this. This poem again, stronly shows the loss of innocence and his need to grow up.
Heaney’s poem Personal Helicon can be seen to be rather more positive then the others mentioned so far.
‘As a child they could not jepp me away from wells.’
In the poem he explins his facination with wells. This shows that as a child he had a safe and secure childhood that he was able to. The rich description as commonly used in many of Heanys poems represents his experiences and learning in nature. He reflects on how he had to learn about all the horrible things in nature as well as the good thinmgs like the ‘rat slapped across my reflection’.
Rather then ending with negative images, the reader can feel more that he has accepted growing up but realises, perhaps more objectively that things are different for adults.
‘Now… to finger slime…
It beneath all adult dignity’
He talks about writing to ‘set the darkness echoing’ like he did when he was a child, looking at the wells. He realises that his dream to be a writer has repleced his facination with wells and that his creativity has evolved rather then dissappeared.
