Hawk roosting + Death of a naturalist

• I sit on top of the wood
• hooked head and hooked feet: or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat
• air's buoyancy and the sun's ray are of advantage to me
• it took whole of creation to produce my each foot, my each feather
• I kill where I please because it's all mine
• my manners are tearing off heads - juxtaposition
• the sun is behind me
• allotment of death
• Hughs worked in the RAF
• Father was WW1 veteran - influenced by violence
• fascinated at nature since a child
• aware of harsh realities of nature - grew up in the countryside
• dramatic monologue - speaker addresses a silent audience showings hawks power
• stanzas are equal length showing the hawks power over the poem
• free verse showing the hawks power over the poem
• Emjambent and caesura showing hawks is not caged in line length and rhyme scheme. Stops ideas and sentences when it wants
• all year the flax-dam festered in the heart of the townland
• bubbles gargled delicately - oxymoron
• but best of all was the warm thick slobber of frogspawn
• angry frogs invaded the flax-dam
• I sickened, turned and ran
• semantic field of war (2nd stanza) - poised like mud grenades, pulsed like snails
• title reflects metaphorical deaths of someone interested in nature
• the death can also be seen as the death of the good relationship between nature and man
• Heaney was Irish
• became a father the same year the poem was published
• brother died aged 4
• Heaney was massively acclaimed
• volta in the poem shows negative shift to adulthood
• 1st stanza much longer showing he enjoys being a child within the memory
• emjambment in the first stanza shows excitement