Works of art often sparked his imagination. There were fine translations of Dante and Sophocles and an acclaimed version of Beowulf. European literature was in his bones. In an essay on three English poets – his close friend Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and Geoffrey Hill – he wrote of the “cultural depth-charges latent in certain words and rhythms, the binding secret between words in poetry that delights not just the ear but the whole backward and abysm of mind and body”. The phrase “backward and abysm” recalls The Tempest: Prospero’s question to his daughter Miranda about her early years. Heaney was in deep touch with his childhood memories out of which he made beautiful poetry. But he also plunged into dark corners of the human heart and the well of ancient literature. He felt like a wise sage as well as a great poet. Though I can hear him gently recoiling from such praise: “The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful,” he told me, ”to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.”