Death Of A Naturalist Flashcards
All year the flax-dan festered in the heart
Of the townland;
‘Flax-dam’ - a type of reed that is harvested which rots - smelly - dried in sun and can be used to make linen
‘Townland’ - a town
What is this poem about?
It’s about how H used to love nature but he got traumatised and so he doesn’t like it anymore - it shows movement the innocence of childhood to the reality of adulthood
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately
Description of water evaporating with rotting vegetation underneath
Detailed description suggests that H thought this was wonderful as a child but a grown up may think differently
Bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
The bluebottles are buzzing back and forth and the use of assonance for the words ‘sound around’ makes it sound like the bluebottles are buzzing around them
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
‘Warm’ - suggests H has put his hand in it because he’s intrigued by it
Here, every spring/ I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied/ Specks to range on window-sills at home,/On shelves at school, and wait and watch until/The fattening dots burst into nimble-/Swimming tadpoles
This whole metamorphosis is one sentence long which shows H is very excited - it sounds breathy and as if H is anticipating the moment the tadpoles came
Miss Walls would tell us how/ The daddy frog was called a bullfrog/ And how he croaked and how the mammy frog/ Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was/ Frogspawn.
Sounds like how a teacher would talk to a child and then how that child would interpret it and try to explain it - very simply put
You could tell the weather by frogs too/ For they were yellow in the sun and brown/ In rain
A child’s observation - not very logical
Then one hot day when fields were rank
‘Then’ - drumroll
‘Rank’ - stinking
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam
‘Angry frogs’ - they’ve come to their breeding ground
‘Invaded’ - language and tone has changed and it has become more aggressive
I ducked through hedges
To a coarse-croaking that I had not heard
Before
‘Coarse-croaking’ - not nice - H is unknowingly observing something that takes place every year
The air was thick with a bass chorus
Working together - huge noise created
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods
H is revolted and ‘cocked’ could be like a gun cocking - the frogs are ready to jump and so they are dangerous
The slap and plop were obscene threats.
Onomatopoeic
Some sat
Poised like mud grenades
The frogs are covered in mud and the mud flies of them when the jump - legs sticking out
