Death of a Naturalist

• All year the flax-dam festered in the heart


  Means that the flax dam rots. Heart could mean that flax dam is like a rotting wound.

  - Shows the rural make up of the place that he grew up in

  - Flax is the metaphorical heart of the place
• The air was thick with a bass chorus


  This shows the sensory reactions to this natural environment, it can also show how heavy the beauty of nature comes at as a cost, it also shows how nature is teeming with life though
• Best of all was the warm thick slobber / Of frogspawn


  The poet here describes the joy of childish curiosity meeting with the nature's beauty - romanticism
• Then one hot day when fields were rank / With cowdung in the grass


  This marked the turning point of when reality hits in his childish innocence, he is exposed to a horrifying side of nature which he once thought of as wonderful.
• The great slime kings / Were gathered there for vengeance


  Personification"great slime kings" shows that they now have the power and superiority over him which was reversed previously.

  
  

  gives them a title makes them seem powerful, feelings of guilt crept in, grown up and sees that not all is pleasant.
• The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat / Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting


  It adds childish humorous, which combines the child's innocence, curiosity and unpredictability and their threat they perceived the frogs now to have
• Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles / Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.


  It shows a rich sensory experience and with verbs they seem childish in nature to use, and to us it puts us off but it reminds us of how children will innocently interact with nature lightheartedly
• Context heaney


  Based in Northern Ireland and his experienced, written during famine,
• Structure


  No regular rhyme scheme, two large stanzas