Seamus Heaney has passed away.

[Staggerwing]

I heard this on the news earlier and saw it again while looking at the Bill O'reilly NY Times story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/arts/seamus-heaney-acclaimed-irish-poet-dies-at-74.html?src=me&ref=general

I have his side-by-side English/Anglo-Saxon Beowulf translation on my bookshelf. Somewhere on one of my many saved hard drives I also have an audio file of him narrating the work as well.

In "The Cure at Troy," his 1991 verse adaptation of Sophocles' play "Philoctetes," about the Trojan War, Mr. Heaney wrote these evocative lines:

History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

[LongBlade]

I have his book, too, though it isn't unpacked yet.

RIP

[Con]

god I had to write so many essays about his poems in school....

Con

[Staggerwing]

I've no doubt that he approved of each one.

[Con]

Well I am sure he would have been more harsh the Mr. Liddle my English and Lit teacher with my interpretation of the allegories found in the poem of the Tolland Bogman...

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/heaney/the_tollund_man.php

Con

[Staggerwing]

IIRC Poul Anderson wrote a novella based on the Tollund Man, speculating on who he was and how he ended up as the 'drowned king'.