Summary
"Death of a Naturalist" gives an embellished account of a moment in the speaker's childhood. The poem begins with a description of the “flax-dam,” or the place where flax is placed to soften its fibers, in the town where the speaker lived as a child. The speaker describes the fermentation, focusing on the scent produced by the rotting flax, then moves on to describe the insect life that has "[woven] a strong gauze of sound around the smell." The speaker identifies his favorite critter, however, not as any of the bugs but as the "thick slobber/Of frogspawn.”
About halfway through the first stanza, the speaker turns to more specific experiences, describing how he would take the frogspawn home and to school in jars to watch it become "nimble/Swimming tadpoles." He remembers a moment when his teacher, Miss Walls, described the family structure of the frogs, calling the frogs "daddy" and "mammy." The speaker also mentions that the frogspawn changed color according to the weather.
The next stanza shifts to look at a specific moment in the speaker's childhood. In this memory, he comes to the flax-dam and finds an unusual number of frogs there. They are very active, pulsing and hopping menacingly. The speaker describes how he felt "sickened" and fled the scene; he asserts that these "slime kings" were coming to avenge the tadpoles that he had stolen from them. "I knew/That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it," he says.
Analysis
The first stanza of this poem describes the flax in the flax-dam, or a hole where the flax would be placed to ferment, creating raw material for linen. The language used in the first stanza suggests that the speaker is embellishing his memories, for his descriptions are vivid and visceral. The first several lines lean heavily into images of fermenting matter. The speaker uses words such as "fester" and "rotting" to describe the scene; the flax-dam appears to seethe with life, but that life is generated by the flax’s decay.
The first stanza also uses language to convey the speaker's childlike mindset. The description of the "dragonflies, spotted butterflies," and the "warm thick slobber" at the flax-dam all evoke a warm innocence, as does the description of Miss Walls's lesson. Toward the end of the first stanza, the speaker says, "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." The breathlessness of this long sentence mimics the way a child would speak. Though the “I” does not appear until about halfway through the first stanza, the presence of a specific perspective is clearly implied by the specific location mentioned, as well as lines that indicate an opinion such as, “But best of all was the thick warm slobber…”
The second stanza is shorter and colder than the first; its length and tone parallel the speaker’s emergence into a more somber and thoughtful phase of his life. The language used strips away the wonderment of the first stanza, leaving behind a less nostalgic, more cynical portrait of the flax-dam. Though the rotting flax is mentioned in the first stanza, it is quickly swallowed by beautiful images of the bubbling water, the insects and butterflies, and the hot sun. In this stanza, the speaker flatly says, “Then one hot day when fields were rank/With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs/Invaded the flax-dam,” excluding the more alluring details.
In this stanza, the frogs are threatening to the speaker. He hears intent to harm in the “bass chorus” of their croaking and sees it in their movement. They disgust him as nothing so far in the poem has; he describes their bellies as “gross”, compares them to “mud grenades”, and describes the “farting” of their heads. He says of himself, “I sickened, turned, and ran.”
Yet it is not mere disgust that makes him flee. The inclusion of the lines about Miss Walls indicates that learning more about the frogs and the source of the frogspawn has influenced the speaker’s attitude. The final lines make this even clearer. The speaker says, “The great slime kings/Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew/That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.” By mentioning vengeance, the speaker shows that he relates this scene back to his prior actions of stealing the frogspawn. By specifically saying that the frogspawn would clutch his hand, instead of perhaps imagining how the grown frogs would attack him, the speaker shows that not only has his attitude toward the frogspawn changed, but he imagines its attitude toward him has changed as well; they have lost trust in one another. This indicates that for the speaker as a child, this moment is a distillation of his growing maturity; he has begun to understand that his actions have consequences, and that, however innocent his intentions, his actions can harm others.
