‘Death of a Naturalist’ was published by Seamus Heaney in a collection of the same name in 1966. The poem begins with a number of poignant images of a swamp-like area. There are flies, wet soil, and the hot sun burning down from above. There are also frogspawn, or the stage of a frog’s life before it becomes a tadpole. The sight of these barely developed creatures makes the speaker think about school and when he and his classmates would collect them in jars. He was fascinated by frogs at this point. Suddenly, the poem ends with the speaker encountering more frogs than he has ever seen in one place. He is terribly frightened by the sight and runs off, shattering the pleasant memories of childhood the creatures brought back.
Death of a 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 dragonflies, 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.
"Death of a Naturalist" SOURCE: YouTube (2011), URL: https://youtu.be/sgsaB4NRSak
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