'Death of a Naturalist' and 'The Early Purges' are both concerned with a child's change in attitude to animals or nature. Write about both of these poems commenting on how each deals with the idea.

... 'Death of a Naturalist' and 'The Early Purges' are both concerned with a child's change in attitude to animals or nature. Write about both of these poems commenting on how each deals with the idea. Both 'Death of a Naturalist' and 'The Early Purges' are poems written by Seamus Heaney. Each begins by explaining a child's enthusiasm for nature, and goes on to describe how this fascination is somehow changed. Both poems put across the idea that childhood is a time of innocence before the realities of life are properly understood. The poem 'The Early Purges' is set on a farm. It has a strong rhyme scheme where each stanza has three lines, the first rhyming with third every time. The first line is "I was six when I first saw kittens drown" so we know that the poet is looking back to events of his childhood. This is a

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