st
luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly mingled
with flowers of every dye. In his preface to his lament over Keats,
Shelley says:

"He was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants,
under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and
towers, now moldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient
Rome. It is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with
violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that
one should be buried in so sweet a place."

If Shelley had chosen his own grave at the time, he would have selected
the very spot where he has since been laid--the most sequestered and
flowery nook of the place he describes so feelingly.

On the second terrace of the declivity are ten or twelve graves, two of
which bear the names of Americans who have died in Rome. A portrait
carved in bas-relief, upon one of the slabs, told me, without the
inscription, that one whom I had known was buried beneath. The slightly
rising mound was covered with small violets, half hidden by the grass.
It takes away from the pain with which one stands over the grave of an
acquaintance or a friend, to see the sun lying so warm upon it, and the
flowers springing so profusely and cheerfully. Nature seems to have
cared for those who have died so far from home, binding the earth gently
over them with grass, and decking it with the most delicate flowers. We
descended to the lower enclosure at the foot of the slight declivity.
The first grave here is that of Keats. The inscription runs thus:

"This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who,
on his death-bed in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power
of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb: 'Here
lies one whose name was written in water.'"

He died at Rome in 1821. Every reader knows his history and the cause of
his death. Shelley says, in the preface to his elegy:

"The savage criticism on his poems, which appeared in the "Quarterly
Review," produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the
agitation thus originated ended in a rupture of a blood-vessel in the
lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments,
from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were
ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted."

Keats was, no doubt, a poet of very uncommon promise. He had all the
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