How Does Seamus Heaney Write About Nature, Compared With At Least One Pre-1900 Poet Heaney addresses many aspects of nature in his writing. In the poems that I have read, he encounters such things as mans relationship with nature, what he believes nature may be, and where in nature he thinks man belongs. After reading poems by Heaney, Wordsworth and Hopkins, I feel that they try convey the idea of nature being beautiful to the reader, something that in its untouched wildness can still look astounding and marvellous, without being altered or changed in any way. It is this beauty found in natures wildness which causes the writers to also relay the idea that nature can sometimes be threatening.
In Wordsworths Prelude, the reader is greeted by scenes of a calm and serene summers evening. This effect is given by phrases such as Leaving behind her still, on either side / Small circles glittering idly in the moon. Then the writer decides to steal a boat and go out rowing on the lake. As he is rowing and he moves away from a mountain at the side of the lake, another mountain behind it begins to appear, at night, in the dark Wordsworth does not know that it is a mountain, instead he describes it as some sort of monster, as if it was a creature of the deep, a creature doing natures bidding to punish him from stealing, or maybe even nature itself. In which case he personifies nature as this monster with phrases like motion like a living thing / Strode after me. What would be seen as a quite spectacular mountain by some in the middle of the day, can also be threatening to men, not only at night to Wordsworth, but also to climbers, for example, caught in harsh weather conditions unable to descend it.
The Essay on Mountain Men
Thoughts on the Mountain Man and the Fur Trade Critique This article was somewhat interesting; it was not a very appealing title for the author to have chosen to write about. He talks about the importance of Fur Trade in the 1800s, even though there are those who say it was not a very important export that required few men I strongly believe that this did play a very big role in history. What I ...
In Wordsworths case however he describes nature as a living breathing thing which reacts to mans behaviour an responds as it sees fit. In Death of a Naturalist and Blackberry Picking Heaney also describes nature in this way. In both poems Heaney describes scenes form his childhood. We know this because he uses language like daddy frog, mammy frog and You could tell the weather by frogs too. Emphasis here on the word too as it is an unnecessary postfix of childish nature. The poems have two distinct sections to them.
In the first section nature and man interact and we see pleasant childhood scenes. This effect is created by the use of words and phrases such as flax-dam festered, rotted and warm thick slobber in Death of a Naturalist. These things obviously please Heaney, as they would please any young boy, dirtiness and muskiness, they are the sort of things go hand in hand with young boys. In Blackberry Picking some of the words and phrases used which describe the juiciness of the blackberries are, glossy purple clot, summers blood was in it, flesh was sweet and the red ones inked up, all telling of the freshness and ripeness of the blackberries with no trace of imperfections. In the second distinct section the poems change dramatically and nature changes from peaceful and beautiful to threatening.
In Death of a Naturalist Heaney describes the frogs like an army that has come to seek revenge on him from stealing their unborn young, The great slime kings/ Were gathered there for vengeance. This is done by words and phrases such as the angry frogs/ Invaded the flax-dam, cocked, poised like mud grenades and ducked.
