poems by seamus heaney blackberry picking

The reader can therefore observe that Heaney has lost his innocence and that through his childhood memory, he has changed. However, the reader can see that the way he describes the frogs and the phrase, “I sickened, turned, and ran”, highlights that Heaney, even as a nearly thirty-year-old man, was scared of these frogs, whereas before he was enamoured by them. The word “grenades”, within the simile, depicts the frogs turning into This re-enforces the idea that Heaney believed that the frogs would retaliate against him. He also says the frogs were “poised like mud grenades” and that he “sickened, turned, and ran”. He uses the word “cocked” to indicate that the frogs were like loaded pistols, ready to fire, implying that they were ready to take vengeance on him, due to the way he used to treat them, when he was young. He explains the, “dam gross bellied frogs were cocked” and describes the frogs as “angry”. In the second stanza Heaney presents a different view on the frogs. The memory of these frogs, in the first stanza is quite a happy recollection, however in the second stanza, the reader can see this change, to a different view point. Also, the phrase, “they would turn yellow in the sun and brown in the rain”, is a child-like description of something as it is very simple and vivid. In the first stanza Heaney says he “would fill jampotfuls of the jellied / Specks”, the word “jampotfuls” implies this is a childhood memory as it is a made-up word and mirrors the way in which a child would speak very quickly, with words jumbled together. In Death of a Naturalist, a poem about Heaney’s memory of frogs compared to his is view of them now, he presents the memories of childhood through the lexical field that changes from the past, young Heaney to the present, older Heaney. A pattern which both poems adhere to, in varying degrees, is one of optimism and childhood naivety followed by sobered pessimism, from an older, wiser Heaney.

Poems by seamus heaney blackberry picking