Death of a Naturalist Read online

  On its original appearance in 1966, forty years ago, Death of a Naturalist won the Cholmondeley Award, the Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Prize.

  ‘The power and precision of his best poems are a delight, and as a first collection Death of a Naturalist is outstanding. His subject is those things which are inherent or inherited. What he praises is to be praised in his own work.’

  Christopher Ricks, New Statesman

  ‘We confidently expect him to broaden his range and our imaginative estate.’

  John Hewitt, Belfast Telegraph

  ‘The full-blooded energy of these poems makes Death of a Naturalist the best first book of poems I’ve read for some time.’

  C. B. Cox, Spectator

  ‘His childhood landscape has acquired the validity of myth.’ Michael Longley, Irish Times

  Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,

  To stare big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring

  Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme

  To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

  Author biography

  Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection, appeared in 1966, and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations which have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. He has twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. District and Circle, his eleventh collection of poems, was published in 2006 and was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize.

  by the same author

  poetry

  DOOR INTO THE DARK

  WINTERING OUT

  NORTH

  FIELD WORK

  STATION ISLAND

  SWEENEY ASTRAY

  SWEENEY’S FLIGHT

  (with photographs by Rachel Giese)

  THE HAW LANTERN

  NEW SELECTED POEMS 1966–1987

  SEEING THINGS

  LAMENTS BY JAN KOCHANOWSKI

  (translated with stanislaw baránczak)

  OPENED GROUND: POEMS 1966–1996

  THE SPIRIT LEVEL

  BEOWULF

  ELECTRIC LIGHT

  DISTRICT AND CIRCLE

  THE RATTLE BAG

  (edited with Ted Hughes)

  THE SCHOOL BAG

  (edited with Ted Hughes)

  prose

  PREOCCUPATIONS: SELECTED PROSE 1968–78

  THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE

  THE REDRESS OF POETRY: OXFORD LECTURES

  FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE 1971–2001

  plays

  THE CURE AT TROY

  THE BURIAL AT THEBES

  Copyright

  First published in 1966

  by Faber and Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House

  74-77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2009

  All rights reserved

  © Seamus Heaney, 1966, 1991

  The right of Seamus Heaney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  ISBN 978—0—571—25073—8

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.