lies perfected in my memory, down to the red horn of his nails, ung in the scales with beauty and atrocity: with the Dying Gaul too strictly compassed on his shield, with the actual weight of each hooded victim, slashed and dumped. Seamus Heaney was born in 1939. He was brought up on a farm near Bellaghy, County Derry. His first book, Death of a Naturalist, was published in 1966 and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations which have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Opened Ground: Poems 1966-96 was published in 1998.