Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread."
And so passing from grave to grave we came to the one we sought, and standing before a simple stone slab, read those sad words which poor Keats, in bitterness of spirit, wished to have written above his grave: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was comforting to turn from this to a marble tablet on the wall near by, where there is a head of Keats in low relief, and under it a beautiful inscription saying that he is among the immortals. The young poet's devoted friend Joseph Severn lies near him.
Across the road is the newer cemetery, whose gate was opened for us by a girl with a huge key fastened to her girdle, whom Zelphine and I likened to "the damsel named Discretion." Angela, being a modern girl and unfamiliar with "Pilgrim's Progress," did not understand the allusion, and said:
"Small thanks to her if she is discreet, when she is not able to say a word to us, good or bad!"
Zelphine always looks at me hopelessly on such occasions, lamenting over what she calls the lack of background in the outlook of the girl of to-day, whom I always defend loyally although I believe Zelphine is more than half right.
We found the grave of Shelley, who so soon followed his Adonais. It seemed as if that lonely "Cor Cordium" should have been buried near the friendly shades of Keats and Severn. Yet Mrs. Shelley, in writing of the burial of the ashes of her husband, makes no mention of their being placed within the newer cemetery. She simply says he selected the hallowed place himself, where is the
"sepulchre,
O, not of him, but of our joy!"