Nobel poet laureate Seamus Heaney has been remembered as one of Ireland’s finest literary minds following his death after a short illness. The farmer’s son died in hospital in Dublin aged 74.

It is simply unbelievable that Seamus Heaney is dead. It is astonishing and it must be untrue; untrue in the deepest, most immortal sense of that word.

A master poet and family man, a Nobel laureate and friend, a guest of royalty and farmer’s son, Seamus Heaney had a life which was a smooth blend of the ordinary and extraordinary.

The funeral mass for Seamus Heaney will take place on Monday at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Donnybrook, south Dublin followed by burial in his birthplace of Bellaghy, Co Derry.

Nobel poet laureate Seamus Heaney has been remembered as one of Ireland’s finest literary minds following his death after a short illness.

The world-famous poet, Seamus Heaney who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, passed away today at 74 years of age.