Death of A Naturalist - Poems

Poems

From Mid-term break

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

"Death of a Naturalist," the collection's second poem, details the exploits of a young boy collecting frogspawn from a flax-dam. The narrator remembers everything he saw and felt at those times. He then remembers his teacher telling him all about frogs in a section that speaks volumes about childhood innocence. Finally, we hear about a trip to the flax-dam that went wrong. He feels threatened by the frogs and flees. His interest in nature has gone - this is the death of a "naturalist" suggested in the poem's title. The poem makes extensive use of onomatopoeia and a simile that compares the behaviour of the amphibians to warfare ("Some sat poised like mud grenades") amongst other techniques.

"Mid-Term Break" is a reflection on the death of Heaney's four-year-old brother, Christopher, while Heaney was at school. He describes his parents' different ways of displaying grief, visitors paying their respects, and his encounter of his brother's corpse in its coffin the next morning. The poem focuses on concrete particulars of Heaney's experience and "captures a boy’s unfolding consciousness of death." The final line ("A four foot box, a foot for every year.") emphasizes death's finality.