of work In the closing lines he says Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests I ll dig with it It means he has found his own way of digging The pen becomes his tool just like the spade was his father s For him dig will be writing poetry Nature here represents family tradition and the deep respect for honest earthy labor Love and Admiration In Follower Heaney again celebrates his father s work on the land His father ploughs with great skill and his shoulders are globed like a full sail of a ship The image shows both the strength and skill of his father The father is an expert who can guide the horse-drawn plow perfectly It makes straight furrows in the land The poet remembers how he tried to follow his father while he worked But as a small boy he often stumbled and fell He wished to grow up and plow perfectly like his father I wanted to grow up and plough So in this poem Heaney uses nature to show his deep respect for his father and also admiration for the simple farmwork Beauty and Disappointment In Blackberry-Picking Heaney uses nature to show how beauty and happiness fade with time At the beginning of the poem Heaney describes a child s excitement at picking ripe blackberries The berries are beautiful and sweet The first ripe one was Sweet Like thickened wine The child wants to pick more Their hands are scratched and sticky But they do not care because they are so happy When the children bring the berries home their happiness ends The berries start to rot The sweet fruit becomes stinking and sour The child feels like crying because the joy he felt has quickly disappeared He feels so sad and says It wasn t fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot So here nature shows the truth that nothing beautiful or joyful can last forever Loss of Childhood Innocence In Death of a Naturalist Heaney shows how a child s innocent love for nature turns into fear As a boy he loved to collect frogspawn He loved to watch tadpoles grow The smells and sounds of the flax-dam filled him with wonder As he grows up his relationship to nature changes Instead of enjoying the natural world with innocent curiosity he finds it threatening and disgusting The frogs appear in large numbers their gross bellied bodies and unknown threat terrify him The same nature that once fascinated him now seems dangerous This change shows the loss of childhood innocence and the realization that nature also has a wild frightening side In conclusion Seamus Heaney s poems treat nature as a living force Nature connects family generations through work and love Nature also teaches about joy and loss For Heaney nature is not just scenery it is the heart of human life