"Digging" Seamus Heaney's "Digging" is the first poem in the first complete volume of Heaney's poems, "Death of a Naturalist." “Death of a Naturalist” is about coming of age and the loss of innocence. The poem shows how much Heaney admired his father and grandfather, especially their hard work. Although Heaney did not follow in their footsteps and become a farm laborer, he respects the work they do, particularly their digging skills. The poem is a free verse poem. It has eight stanzas with two couplets. He rhymes from time to time, but he doesn't have a structured rhyme. The first two lines rhyme with “thumb” and “gun”, the second stanza also contains a few rhyming words. The poem is a first-person narrative; this is evident from the first line which uses the word "my" and other lines which use words such as "I" and "we". The title refers to the poem because the three generations mentioned are digging. His father dug seeders and flower beds, his grandfather dug peat and he unearthed the past. For this reason, the title is very appropriate. Throughout the poem, Seamus Heaney uses changes in tense to convey his memories as well as his determination for the future. It begins in the present as he sees his father struggling with the flowerbed. The poem then moves to the past in order to recall the work of his grandfather digging peat and the stronger days of his father digging potato planters. The poem returns to the present during the last two stanzas. The last line is in the future tense to show that Seamus understands that his job is to write. The first stanza of the poem says that the pen in his hand is "fit like a gun" (line 2. The second stanza is Heaney looking down). is a window towards the middle of the paper......as they fill the bucket. Another change occurs in the second stanza when the speaker says that they “hoarded the fresh berries in the stable” (line 17). ). “Byre” means a shed, but it can also be a support for a coffin or corpse. This foreshadows what is to come. The berries are starting to spoil because we picked more than we could eat in time. the mushrooms that gorged our cache” (line 19) have reached them. The berries would have lasted longer if they had been left on the bush, but desire and greed overwhelmed the speaker while picking the succulent berries, as he lost the berries because of it. rotting, the speaker says, “I always wanted to cry.” It wasn't fair / That all the pretty cans smelled like rot / Every year I hoped they'd keep, I knew they wouldn't” (lines 22-24). The speaker picks berries every year, more berries than needed, and he always sees them go bad..