death of a naturalist

• the narrator remembers how they used to collect frogspawn in a flax dam. their view on nature changes from being excitable when younger to being disgusted as they grow up
• lack of rhyme scheme suggests change is not always predictable
• "flax had rotted there"

  foreshadowing the way the narrator becomes repulsed by nature.
• "bubbles gargled delicately" - the bubbles are a metaphor for the child's innocence


  the oxymoron also shows the excitement of something disgusting
• "daddy frog", "mammy frog" 


  childlike language shows the narrator slipping into their childhood self

  repetition of frog conveys youth
• "invaded the flax-dam", "gross bellied frogs were cocked"

  military imagery shows nature as something dark and potentially harmful
• personification in the first stanza is used to show excitement and fascination of nature whereas in the second stanza it is used to show the frogs as dominating and a threat


  " the great slime kings "