Death of Naturalist

Poetry | Seamus Heaney
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I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings

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Explain the following with reference to the context:

“I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.”

These lines come from the second part of Seamus Heaney’s (1939-2013) “Death of a Naturalist” (1966). In the poem, the poet describes how a young boy’s love for nature changes into fear. At the beginning of the poem, the boy enjoys collecting frogspawn. He thinks frogs are friendly and magical. But later, when he grows a little older, his feelings change.

In these lines, the boy returns to the flax-dam on a hot day. The place now feels completely different. The air is full of a strong smell of cow dung. The frogs are not small or cute anymore. They look big, swollen, and angry. Their movements seem frightening. Because the boy has grown older, his imagination also changes. He feels as if t

he frogs are standing together like an angry army. So he calls them “the great slime kings.” This shows that the frogs look powerful and scary to him.

The boy also imagines that the frogs want revenge because earlier he had taken their frogspawn in jars. He thinks that if he puts his hand inside the water again, the frogspawn will grab his hand. These thoughts show his fear. Nothing real is attacking him, but his imagination makes him terrified.

The line “I sickened, turned, and ran” shows the moment when the boy loses his childhood innocence. He feels disgusted, afraid and runs away. This is the “death” of the naturalist inside him. His old excitement dies, and fear takes its place. It is the loss of childhood innocence and the beginning of maturity.

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Seamus Heaney
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from Death of Naturalist