He was a man of "tenderness and strength" whose death was "a rent in the veil of poetry". At the private funeral in Devon yesterday of the former Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, the Irish Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, paid tribute to his extraordinary work and life. Dr Heaney told mourners simply that he was "taken from us too soon".
"You have to go back to the death of Dylan Thomas or Lorca to find a time which so expresses that moment when a poet's death is expressed as a breach in nature," Dr Heaney said.
About 200 friends and family gathered in the 13th-century church of St Peter in the secluded village of North Tawton, near Dartmoor. He and his second wife, Carol, had made their home close by nearly 30 years ago.
Under the lych-gate of St Peter's, up the flint path laid by French prisoners during the Napoleonic wars and under the 13th-century crop-stone tower, Frieda and Nicholas, Hughes's children by Sylvia Plath, carried their father's coffin, helped by four other pall-bearers.
Mr Hughes, who was a deeply private man, had kept his 18month battle against liver cancer a secret from the public. He died last Wednesday at the age of 68.
At the funeral service, Dr Heaney read the Dylan Thomas poem, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, at the request of Mrs Hughes, and two of Hughes's finest works, Go Fishing and The Day He Died, the latter of which was in memory of Mrs Hughes's father.
The Rev Terence McCaughey, who was a friend of Mr Hughes from their student days at Cambridge University and now teaches at Trinity College Dublin, gave the address. He told the mourners that the poet's friends, associates, fellow artists and neighbours had "along the way been touched somehow, some time by this remarkable man. He had so much to say, and the world will be fertilised and enriched by what he wrote. We have come to say thanks to him one last time."
He also spoke of the poet's vitality and exuberance, but said he was a man who also knew there was a time "to be reticent in the use of words".
Mr Hughes's local vicar, the Rev Mark Butchers, said the mourners had gathered "to give thanks for what he gave the world through his poetry".
Actress Dame Diana Rigg and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg were among the congregation. Afterwards Mr Hughes's body was cremated.
Shortly before his death, Queen Elizabeth had awarded Mr Hughes the Order of Merit for distinguished achievement. Despite various honours and public acclaim, however, his life was always dogged by criticism of his behaviour towards his first wife, the American poet, Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 during a period of separation from her husband. Her supporters vilified Mr Hughes, who was made Poet Laureate in 1984, and he all but retreated from public life.
However, his reputation was given something of a boost earlier this year by his decision to release Birthday Letters, a collection of 88 works chronicling his relationship with Plath and his sadness at her death which was almost certainly published because he knew he was dying.