The poem is a autobiography written by a man called Heaney, he wrote this poem in his late 30's looking back at his childhood. He tells the story of him growing up. At first he used to love the sliminess of the flax-dam and how he used to play with the frogspawn, which he found very interesting. He was very fond of nature. He used to take the spawn home. One day when he returned to the dam he found that the frogs had invaded he territory; he fled from the place in disgust and became no more fond of nature.

The boy is looking at nature as beautiful and then finding out the truth about it by catching a glimpse of the real world. What Heaney's trying to say is that when people grow up they come out of `fairy-land'. They understand the truth about Santa Claus...