[Shaun]

Seamus Heaney, acclaimed by many as the best Irish poet since WB Yeats, has died aged 74.

Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".

Over his long career he was awarded numerous prizes and received many honours for his work.

He recently suffered from ill health.

His 2010 poetry collection The Human Chain was written after he suffered a stroke and the central poem, Miracle, was directly inspired by his illness.

Recalling how he had been lifted up and down the stairs to his bedroom, the poet eulogised the biblical characters who carried a paralysed man to Jesus to be healed.

"Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked / In their backs, the stretcher handles / Slippery with sweat. And no let up."
'Profound sorrow'

"The death has taken place of Seamus Heaney," said a short statement issued by his family on Friday.

"The poet and Nobel laureate died in hospital in Dublin this morning after a short illness. The family has requested privacy at this time."

Heaney's publisher, Faber, said: "We cannot adequately express our profound sorrow at the loss of one of the world's greatest writers. His impact on literary culture is immeasurable.

"As his publisher we could not have been prouder to publish his work over nearly 50 years. He was nothing short of an inspiration to the company, and his friendship over many years is a great loss."

Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate and a friend of Heaney, told The Telegraph that Heaney was "a great poet, a wonderful writer about poetry, and a person of truly exceptional grace and intelligence."

Heaney was born in April 1939, the eldest of nine children, on a farm near Toomebridge in County Derry, Northern Ireland, but as a child moved to the village of Bellaghy.

He was educated at St Columb's College, Derry, a Catholic boarding school, and later at Queen's University Belfast, before training as a teacher. He settled in Dublin, with periods of teaching in the US.

Heaney was an honorary fellow at Trinity College Dublin and, last year, was bestowed with the Seamus Heaney Professorship in Irish Writing at the university, which he described as a great honour.

His first book, Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966, reflected his rural upbringing, but as Ireland's troubles increased his work took a more political turn.

In 2011, Heaney donated a collection of his literary papers to the National Library of Ireland.

It included manuscripts of his poetry, a comprehensive and vast collection of loose-leaf, typescript and manuscript worksheets and bound notebooks.

The collection spanned Heaney's literary career, from the publication of Death of a Naturalist (1966), to volumes such as Wintering Out (1972) and North (1975), right through to Station Island (1984), Seeing Things (1991) and his most recent publications, District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010).

The latter won the prestigious £10,000 Forward Prize in 2010.

Heaney described the collection, his 12th, as his most personally revealing collection of poems.

He had been nominated for the Forward Prize three times before, but this was his first win. Judge and author Ruth Padel described Heaney's volume as "painful, honest, and delicately weighted".

Over the course of his career, Heaney also won the TS Eliot Prize, and was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

He was also the professor of poetry at Oxford University between 1989 and 1994.

In an interview with the Today programme's James Naughtie in early 2013, Heaney remembered how he felt when he first discovered poetry.

"It was the voltage of the language, it was entrancing," he said.

"I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on."

Irish President Michael D Higgins said Heaney's contribution "to the republics of letters, conscience, and humanity was immense".

Northern Irish poet Michael Longley said: "I feel like I've lost a brother and there are tens of thousands of people today who will be feeling personally bereaved because he had a great presence.

"Just as his presence filled a room, his marvellous poems filled the hearts of generations of readers."

Australian author Kathy Lette posted on Twitter: "RIP Seamus Heaney. I once introduced him to my son as the world's greatest poet. My son frowned. 'No, that would be Bob Dylan.' Seamus roared."

Heaney is survived by his wife, Marie, and children, Christopher, Michael and Catherine Ann.

Funeral arrangements are to be announced later.

Tribute by Simon Armitage:

I'll remember him both as a poet and a person - an incredibly generous and open man. He was a great ambassador for poetry and I think that's recognised almost worldwide. People only had good things to say about his courtesy and his integrity.

He was the poet I encountered at school and he made me think it was possible for anybody who showed an interest in poetry to write it.

What made him so successful and so affirmed as a poet was the way he managed to straddle the intellectual rigors of poetry and the academic elements that come with that, with a lightness of touch that meant even people who weren't that interested in the art form would respond to his work. They're so deft and subtle and I suppose that was his ear for language.

I remember once being in a pub with him in Shropshire - he was a superstar in the world of literature but in that pub he was like a guy from the village. He just sat there in the corner chatting way.

Sad about this, his were some of the works and poems I enjoyed the most when studying at GCSE and A Level R.I.P.

[Kizzy]

My English Lit tutor was one of his students in Ireland.

[Z]

Such sad news, I love his poetry

[Nemo123]

Death Of A Naturalist

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
Seamus Heaney

[Ramsay]

English and History were the only two subjects i really was properly interested in in school..we studied some of Seamus' poems..very sad to hear..RIP

[Tregard]

Two Lorries is my favourite Heany poem. Such a great writer, he will be sorely missed.

[NickUhasRocks]

I'm a student of Irish literature and history. I absolutely love his works. It's his and Yeats' works that got me into the program I am and have me happy in it. I'm deeply saddened by his death.

RIP Seamus Heaney