Explore the ways that youth is lost in 'Death of a Naturalist', 'ColdKnapLake ', 'On My First Sonne' and 'The Song of the Old Mother' through the poets' portrayal of children.

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COMPARISON ESSAY 4                29/10/04

ESSAY NUMBER 4:

Explore the ways that youth is lost in ‘Death of a Naturalist’, ‘Cold Knap Lake’, ‘On My First Sonne’ and ‘The Song of the Old Mother’ through the poets’ portrayal of children.  Write about:

  • How children are portrayed
  • The feelings the poets convey about youth
  • The methods the poets use to suggest the loss of youth
  • Your own response to the poem

In ‘Death of a Naturalist’, ‘Cold Knap Lake’, ‘On My First Sonne’ and ‘The Song of the Old Mother’, each poet writes about a loss of youth, or a sense of youth no longer being present.  The writer of each poem writes about childhood and children are portrayed.  In ‘Death of a Naturalist’, Seamus Heaney writes about how he began puberty, and entered adolescence.  This change triggered a loss of childhood, and his poem is an insight into this.  In ‘Cold Knap Lake’, Gillian Clarke writes about the doubtful death of a young child in the waters of ‘Cold Knap Lake’, in Barry, South Wales.  In ‘On My First Sonne’, Ben Jonson writes about the loss of his seven year old son as a victim of the great plague.  And finally in ‘The Song of the Old Mother’, W.B Yeats tells of a mother’s routine.

           In ‘Death of a Naturalist’, Heaney writes about his childhood, and the changes that he went through in puberty – the changes that he undertook to transform from boy, to adolescent and finally to a man.  It is also about the loss of innocence associated with childhood, and the lack of responsibility that a young boy possesses.  In ‘Death of a Naturalist’, Heaney vividly describes a childhood experience that triggers the event of change, from the protected and innocent world of childhood, to the uncertainty and unknown of adolescence.  Heaney portrays childhood and children as this: innocent, protected and receptive.

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          Heaney writes ‘Death of a Naturalist’ in two sections, to emphasise the changes in the boy: from simple to complicated.  This is echoed in the use of sentences:  the first stanza ends with a straight forward compound sentence and yet stanza two begins with a long complex sentence.  This is showing the transformation from simple, to complicated: again reiterating the change from boy, to adolescent.

           The effect depends heavily on the choice of Heaney’s language.  Heaney tries to draw the reader into the atmosphere of the poem by describing the conditions at the scene; and elaborating on each ...

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