So this poem reflects autumn, not only in the visual pictures, but also in structure, tone, mood and rhyme.
This brief ode also manages to convey the shortness of autumn, an idea conflicting with the slow, drowsy mood, but nevertheless still portrayed as the ode starts with summer and ends with winter, seemly all too quickly. Within that Keats has a balance. Somewhere in-between is autumn, or perhaps autumn is just the overlapping of summer and winter. The robin at the end signifying the end of autumn and then the swallows migrating giving the reassurance that while this moment of perfection must pass, it must also return.
The question of time in this ode at some points comes to an almost standstill, as sometimes all that moves is ‘ . . . hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind’, ‘ Or by a cyder-press . . . /Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours’. Words and phrases like ‘fill all fruit’ with alliteration help to slow the poem down, ‘swell’ and ‘Drows’d’ using onomatopoeia and assonance, and alliteration in the words ‘hours by hours’ help draw out the oozings of the juice longer.
Keats also uses onomatopoeia on words such as ‘ wailful’ and ‘twitter’ to emphasise them and speed up the poem near the end – into winter.
Also during the poem the alliteration of ‘s’ on many words creates the sound of bees buzzing, the soft wind, corn ears and poppies swaying in the wind, the water of the river moving by, the melancholy sound of the gnats and the hedge-crickets singing. As that alliteration fades out at the end so does autumn.
The mood is so mellow and rich, and is reflected by the alliteration of ‘mmmm’ throughout the first stanza – ‘mists’, ‘mellow’, ‘maturing’, ‘moss’d’, ‘more’ and ‘more’ and the honey overflowing – ‘o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells’.
The tone is of nostalgia, and is as one is after having eaten and drunk to contentment – sleepy and relaxed. Keats gets this across using all the images of the fruits in the first stanza: ‘fruit with ripeness to the core’, ‘gourd and . . . the hazel shells’ and ‘sweet kernel’, and also by using the grape ‘vines’ and cyder. Although the hinted wine and cyder are also a symbol of the strength and potency of the poem, also ‘Drows’d with the fume of poppies’ likewise create the image of an intoxicating drug – cocaine. So these ideas come into conflict: the sleepy relaxed mood with the strength and potency of the drugs. Keats again creates a balance between them.
Like title might suggest, Keats is giving autumn what is ‘owed’ to it, as autumn is often forgotten. This is Keats recognising the significance of autumn, wallowing in its richness. He looks at what autumn brings us, the reproduction, like this poem, which was written years ago, and comes to life for people now; and probably will for generations after.
‘Ode to Autumn' demonstrates that everything will change with nature. And that which is generally regarded as bad – the fermenting/decay – is also essential to the continuation of life.
I did not particularly like this poem. I found it too rich, too intense and the old English language was too much to stomach as well as that in this day and age – over-ripe and outlived its use.
I think, for me, this poems autumn has come and fallen, and too much has happened between then and now for the poem to produce any reminiscence as asked for in stanza two. I live in a city, and so I cannot witness fully the season of autumn as Keats sees it, and therefore cannot fully relate. I have never known of the harvests in cornfields and I have never experienced the comfort and restfulness he describes while watching a cyder-press or sleeping in a field of poppies. And I have never felt sorry that winter has come, only that summer has gone. Summer is for me, Keats’ autumn.
I did not know that anyone could love autumn as Keats seems so undeniably to do. Summer and winter have clear differences, and most people love either of those two, for their distinguishable difference in weather, it catches the eye. Autumn is neither summer nor winter, for me it is just there.
I think Keats was too much of a dreamer, he exaggerates the good in the indifference of autumn. No matter what his poem manages to create, it is not enough. For me autumn is the name given to fill the short interval between summer and winter, nothing more, nothing less.
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
‘Death of a Naturalist’ is Heaney’s recollection with a certain branch of nature, as a child. As the title implies it the death of a naturalist, the death of his interest in nature and the death of his childhood innocence, and thus a movement into adulthood.
Heaney introduces us, firstly, to his world – a pond surrounded by rotting vegetation – ‘in the heart / Of the townland’. The air is rank with the smell of decay and the ‘festering’ flax-dam. It is where he is comfortable, among nature at its worse, or arguably most glorious: with the rotting vegetation, the insects murmuring overhead and ‘best of all’ the frogspawn.
Inside this world the child is a naturalist in two senses – he is in tune with nature and he is not yet tied down or bent by society, ‘as it should be’. His delight while playing with the frogspawn is obvious, and he doesn’t mince his words when describing all his wonders at the flax-dam – ‘huge sods’, ‘warm thick slobber’, ‘flax had rotted’ – because it was what the child valued about that place, he is happy to meet nature in all its unpleasantness.
It later becomes apparent how the child’s interest was generated, from his school teacher Miss Walls, and he repeats self-importantly what Miss Walls has told them,
‘ . . . 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.’
Some of it is useful, but most it useless, but nonetheless classic child information, which accentuates just how much of a protected world he lives in.
In stanza two it is possible to tell right away that something is about to happen by the first line, ‘Then one hot day’, which changes the atmosphere of the poem to one of expectation. The first words to signify an attack are ‘the angry frogs / Invaded the flax-dam’. He thinks that the frogs are angry because he has stolen their eggs and so interprets the frog’s actions of that of a hostile attack. So the imagery described by the child supports the feeling that an attack is imminent – ‘coarse croaking that I had not heard / Before’, ‘gross-bellied frogs were cocked’, ‘their loose necks pulsed like sails’ and ‘Poised like mud grenades’. However the reader should know that it is an innocent situation, that frogs return to the same water every year.
The child feels sickened by the images and so comes the shortest sentence
‘I sickened, turned, and ran.’
The child experiences new feelings, in contrast to the first stanza where the flax-dam was a comfort it now fills the child with terror at this side of nature.
Then the child flees from the nightmarish visions he has conjured up:
‘ . . . The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.’
The child has to deal with these new emotions, the most immediate one being fear, and finds the urge to run. It is a new world for him, unknown, and he is no longer protected from it.
In this poem Heaney has four different angles at which the poem is put together: adult Heaney as a realist, nature’s lessons, his childhood perspective and stripping everything to down to basics. He uses these to give the poem different insights to look from and write from, establishing Heaney’s unique style.
Throughout the poem Heaney plays with the poetic techniques, changing metre, rhythm, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia. He does not, however use very many poetic words, preferring to use words that are close to speech. When Heaney does use poetic words sometimes there is a double meaning e.g. ‘obscene threats’ – filthy and also there is a thrill. As well Heaney uses scatological words like ‘slap’ and ‘plop’ and basic language to shock the reader, and further the repulsive image of this nature.
Like his technique Heaney chooses to show us what is usually overlooked in nature – the decay and rotting; the crueller side of nature, not the reproduction, (even the child’s repeated words from Miss Walls there is no reproduction mentioned)
‘The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
. . . the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn.’
Heaney’s nature in the first stanza is vile, and in the second stanza is frightening. The child realises over the stanza break there comes a change of nature, and so a change in the child’s nature. This idea of reversal is evident all through the poem, e.g. the irony that the child’s realisation comes from what we know and Heaney knows as a harmless situation, and not from the repulsive condition of the flax-dam and the rotting foliage. Also in the first stanza adult Heaney only realises the decay and foulness
‘All year the flax-dam festered . . .
Flax had rotted there’
While the child only realises the wonders
‘But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks.
Then in the next stanza it is the other way around: adult Heaney recognises that the frogs are just returning to water i.e. nature is all right, while the child is petrified thinking that the frogs have come for revenge i.e. nature is horrible. Another example is that the first line is written in iambic pentameters and the next written in trochaic, reversal again, and also slowing the poem down.
More evidence of Heaney slowing the poem is the extra syllable added on to lines 3-5, as it is adult Heaney describing the state of the flax-dam. Then that extra syllable is dropped, and at line 7 the words become more singsong, monosyllabic and simple as the child takes over. Then from lines 14-21 the rhythm gets faster as the child becomes more excited, and at the end of line 14 the hyphen there between nimble and swimming makes the eyes dart down, like how the tadpoles would move about.
In ‘Death of a Naturalist’ Heaney uses many different ways of trying to develop sounds and images. In the first stanza Heaney uses subtle ‘fff’ alliteration to create the sound of the bubbles mentioned in line 5, when things decay. The symbol of the bluebottle, which eats by vomiting over it’s food, and which lay eggs which hatch into maggots as another image of the nauseating side of nature. The word ‘gauze’ is a bandage, and so Heaney is saying that the flax-dam is the sore/wound of the town.
Then in the second stanza the ‘sss’ alliteration creates a growing whispering ‘their loose necks pulsed like sails’, which fades out as the boy runs away.
I think that Heaney is trying to show that nature is a force beyond reckoning, and can surprise and shock. That it can be cruel and sordid, and that it can turn on you. He looks beyond the beauty, finds and digs up what we least want to see. He refuses to be moulded into an everyday poet, by manipulating poetic techniques, rules and words and by shocking the reader. He sees things at their most basic, what lies beneath; like that Heaney is a realist.
I liked ‘Death of a Naturalist’, although it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t nice. Sometimes it wasn’t even like a poem, more like a story that I can relate to, for I used to gather frogspawn and watch the small tadpoles develop into frogs.
I like the fact that it is a modern poem, that Heaney lived in N. Ireland and that this is probably a personal memory. It makes it interesting for me; I often wonder where that flax-dam is, or if it is still around, or if it looks as I imagine.
I like the way there are no specific rules followed by this poet, that Heaney doesn’t allow them to rule his poem, and that we get that precious bit of child information. That is what makes the poem different, unique and special. Then the change in atmosphere alters the poem, makes it frightening, and I can laugh at the child here because that never happened to me.
Comparison of Keats’ and Heaney’s different attitudes and techniques
Keats lived in 19th century England and Heaney lived in 20th century N. Ireland, so their outlooks on life are bound to be different, reflecting on their poetry.
Keats lived at a time when ‘poets were born, not made’, and those who were poets tended to be upper class gentlemen who did not need to earn an income. So the odds were stacked against him from the start. He was born in 1795 and came from a lower class family and when he was ten the first of many tragedies struck him, changing his personality forever. His father was thrown from his horse, killing him, then Keats’ mother remarried, and almost immediately after Keats’ grandfather died.
While Keats and his siblings moved in with their grandmother his mother disappeared, and then reappeared a few years later, ill with tuberculosis. Keats nursed her until she died and after that his attitude to the world changed. He then trained to be an apothecary and passed the exam in 1816
It was at this time that Keats started to write poetry. Although Keats was considered a Romantic poet Romanticism at that time was a rebellion, the lead figures being Coleridge and Wordsworth, who were under heavy criticism.
In 1818 the tuberculosis that would kill Keats showed itself, probably contracted from his brother Tom who Keats had nursed. While under the strain of his illness he met Fanny Brawne, with whom he fell in love with, and in September 1819 Keats wrote many odes including ‘Ode to Autumn’, despite his sickness.
He died in 1821 when he was just 26. Keats had a short, intense life, and his poetry reflected that. He was passionate, and never did anything by halves; he put all his effort into it. In ‘Ode to Autumn’ Keats writes fervently about his autumn as he sees it.
However Heaney was born almost 145 years after Keats in 1939. He lived at the family farm in Mossbawn. In 1961 he took a first in English at Queen’s College, and two yr. later took up a position as an English lecturer there.
His poetry began under the guidance of Philip Hobsbaum, an English poet whose work involved his interest in natural imagery, with occasional violence filtered through. Heaney used these ideas in his work, and was also influenced by Ted Hughes, a personal friend and fellow poet.
Heaney’s poem is about nature turning nasty, and at time Heaney had already lived through World War II, so the world seemed like a dark place at that time. This poem may be Heaney echoing this thought.
Keats and Heaney both see things passionately, and paint a vivid intense picture of it, they microscope what they see, like that they are similar, but the similarities end there as what they do see is very different. Keats sees the beautiful cover of nature and Heaney to the bare basic of nature.
The most obvious differences in these two poems are the techniques, as Keats and Heaney are far apart in years their language and various techniques differ. Keats uses old language, which was probably common in those days, while some of Heaney’s words are very close to speech. Keats language accompanies his classic English style of poem, uses the traditional metre in conjunction with that customary style of English poem. Heaney’s poem uses the metre along with alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, punctuation and scatological words to get his message across; Heaney’s often strong words mean that your throat even moves like a frog.
In ‘Ode to Autumn’ Keats writes as if he is removed from the autumn scene, watching from afar. An air of calm detachment surrounds it, and it is more of an expression of ‘This is how it is’ than ‘I feel’. Keats’ autumn is a picture frozen in time, beautiful and undying; ageless for him. He sees it as it is then, and not the decay, which will eventually take over. Keats refuses to see that, and is an idealist, thinking that things stay as you see them, but in a way they do for Keats because we see it in the poem and he sees it in his head the same forever, and the poem is a way of forever preserving it.
Heaney’s nature has a darker meaning, beneath the surface there is many layers to nature, this is just one, one of the many. However the same is not true for Keats as his nature is more simple and idealistic. Heaney chooses to show us that nature is splendid, but underneath the cover it is also frightening. He is looking for answers because we only ever see part of the story (like in the poem, we only ever see the story from the child’s point of view), because we don’t know everything. We have to grow and learn from our experiences, and this is Heaney’s experience, and there is a change in the child from being a child emotionally and being protected from things like that, and being an adult, as he grows and learns.
Heaney allows us to feel and see the full force of nature, the horror, and see that we cannot control it, but that the decay can. The decay equals the change in nature, and is a metaphor for the change in the child. We are part of nature and while we are not controlled by the change caused by decay what we see and feel and thus learn from changes us.
Keats’ nature is a divine force, nothing, not even decay can change it for Keats. The power of this poem is supposed to bring alive for us autumn as Keats sees it. That’s what Romanticism is about, turning something that an ordinary person would see as perhaps disgusting, into something beautiful and wonderful. For Keats art cures everything, it didn’t matter that he was dying of tuberculosis but it did matter that he wrote this poem.
I think Heaney is trying to show that maybe we are taught to see things by society, and nature is the untamed truth e.g. the child is taught at school about the frogspawn but not how it is made, not mentioning the sexual reproduction involved. Nature is a better teacher than man, it teaches about that, it teaches about recycling in the decay.
It is not enough for Heaney to just watch nature like Keats does. He must be involved in nature. He gets his wellington boots out and gets stuck in. This most likely comes from having lived on a farm, and having all the experiences he did. Keats’ poem came from his ultimately dreamy heart, forever impractical on looking at things as they are.
