Hughes, the Poet Laureate of England since 1984, died aged 68 from cancer on October 28.

His death was ``a rent in the veil of poetry,'' Heaney said in a reading at the service in North Tawton, southwest England.

At the request of Hughes' second wife Carol, the Irish poet read the Dylan Thomas poem ``Do not go gentle into that good night.''

He also read two of the poet laureate's own works, ``Go fishing'' and ``The day he died.''

As well as his own poetry, Hughes will also be remembered for his doomed marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath, which ended with her suicide.

Many of his works took an unsentimental look at nature, which he regarded as beautiful but violent and bloody. His deeply passionate verse was at odds with his reticent, ascetic personality.

Earlier this year he stunned the literary world bypublishing Birthday Letters, a series of previously unknown impassioned poems to Plath.