Seamus Heaney and His Australian George Herbert

Recalling an acclaimed seventeenth-century priest-poet, the Irish Nobel laureate in literature Seamus Heaney (above) summed up the achievement of Peter Steele, a priest-poet friend, when he wrote to him in 2007: “George Herbert would be proud of you.” Steele had a personal chair in English literature at the University of Melbourne, and spent his academic life at Newman College, one of the four original colleges on the campus.

The last letter Steele received, two days before he died from liver cancer on June 27, 2012, came from Heaney. It ended: “With heavy heart but with love and rich memories it’s a case of Ave, pater, atque vale. Seamus.”

A fellow Jesuit, Steele (below) was a lifelong friend of mine. I met Heaney only once, when he spoke at the Irish College in Rome for the fiftieth anniversary of the death of William Butler Yeats. Heaney, who was to follow Yeats by winning the Nobel Prize, recognised abundantly the poetic genius of Yeats. But being in Rome he did…