This reflects the eagerness in picking the blackberries and the joy that he or she got from doing so – the fundamental ideas that are at the centre of the first stanza.
The speaker of the poem is, at the time of its writing, an adult, and they are nostalgically looking back on fond memories of their childhood, saying: “You ate the first one and its flesh was sweet/Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it”. By examining Heaney’s use of language, we are able to almost gain an insight into the workings of human nature and the true meaning the he is trying to convey through “Blackberry Picking”.Īt its essentials, “Blackberry Picking” is not about blackberries or the act of harvesting, but it is a representation of people’s in ability to enjoy something until it is gone and that it only becomes important to them when they can’t have it. This notion is not uncommon in the literary world and can be seen in other poems, such as Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”. Seamus Heaney’s poem “Blackberry Picking”, published in 1966 in Death of a Naturalist, explores the hedonistic nature of human beings in not being able to enjoy something until it is gone.
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