Poetry Slam!: "Death of a Naturalist" by Seamus Heaney

Included in an anthology with the same title, this poem focuses on the speaker's memories of happily collecting frog's eggs before feeling threatened by the angry adults. Read the full text here.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. fester
    decay with an offensive smell
    All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
    Of the townland; green and heavy headed
    Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
  2. sod
    surface layer of ground containing a mat of grass and roots
    All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
    Of the townland; green and heavy headed
    Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
  3. swelter
    be uncomfortably hot
    Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
  4. delicate
    exquisitely fine and subtle and pleasing
    Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
    Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
  5. clot
    change from a liquid to a thickened or solid state
    There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,
    But best of all was the warm thick slobber
    Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
    In the shade of the banks.
  6. range
    extend over or occupy a certain area
    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.
  7. nimble
    moving quickly and lightly
    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.
  8. spawn
    the mass of eggs deposited by fish or amphibians or mollusks
    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.
  9. rank
    very offensive in smell or taste
    Then one hot day when fields were rank
    With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
    Invaded the flax-dam
  10. dung
    fecal matter of animals
    Then one hot day when fields were rank
    With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
    Invaded the flax-dam
  11. coarse
    lacking refinement or cultivation or taste
    I ducked through hedges
    To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
    Before.
  12. pulse
    expand and contract rhythmically
    Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked
    On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails.
  13. obscene
    offensive to the mind
    Some hopped:
    The slap and plop were obscene threats.
  14. poised
    marked by balance or equilibrium and readiness for action
    Some sat
    Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
  15. vengeance
    harming someone in retaliation for something they have done
    The great slime kings
    Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
    That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
Created on Wed Nov 13 09:19:27 EST 2019 (updated Thu Aug 24 14:06:13 EDT 2023)

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