Summary and composition

In what follows, we will focus on the summary and composition of “Death of a Naturalist” by Seamus Heaney.

Summary

The poem follows a lyrical narrator who recalls childhood times when he used to collect frogspawn from a flax-dam.

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Composition

When analysing a poem, you should note that both the outer composition (stanzas, verses, graphical expression) and inner composition (beginning, subdivision, course) are important, as they reveal the lyrical properties of the text and its themes.

Outer composition

The poem is organised in two uneven stanzas, the first one having 21 lines and the second one 12 lines. The lines do not rhyme, so the text is a free-verse poem.

However, the lines follow a classical rhythm pattern, the iambic pentameter. This means that each line is comprised of five feet (ten syllables) of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Still, this rhythm is not constant throughout the poem.

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Inner composition

When it comes to the inner composition, you will notice that the graphical division in the two stanzas also marks two different states of the boy narrator.

Stanza 1 depicts the boy’s enthusiasm and excitement related to the study and observation of frogs and frog spawn:

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