But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”
Leigh Hunt and Trelawney have made familiar the strange sequel of a wild, strange life. Overtaken upon the Mediterranean by a sudden squall, Shelley had hardly time to start from his lounging-place on deck, and thrust into his jacket-pocket the copy of Keats’ Lamia he was reading, when the yacht capsized. His body, with that of Williams, his friend and fellow-voyager, was cast on shore by the waves several days afterward, and burned in the presence of Byron, Trelawney, Hunt, and others.
“Shelley, with his Greek enthusiasm, would not have been sorry to foresee this part of his fate,” writes Hunt. Frankincense, wine and spices, together with Keats’ volume found in his pocket, open at the page he had been reading, were added to the flames.
“The yellow sand and blue sky were intensely contrasted with one another,” continues the biographer. “Marble mountains touched the air with coolness, and the flame of the fire bore away toward heaven in vigorous amplitude, waving and quivering with a brightness of inconceivable beauty. It seemed as though it contained the glassy essence of vitality.”
Trelawney’s account of the ceremony is realistic and revolting. The heart remained perfect amid the glowing embers, and Trelawney accredits himself with the pious act of snatching it from the fire. It and the ashes were sent to Rome for interment “in the place which he had so touchingly described in recording its reception of Keats.”
On week-days, the little cemetery which we had to ourselves on Sabbath, is a popular resort for travelers. Instead of the holy calm that to us, had become one with the caressing sunlight and violet-breath, the old wall gives back the chatter of shrill tongues and gruff responses, as American women and English men trip and tramp along the paths in haste to “do” this one of the Roman sights. We were by Shelley’s tomb, one day, when a British matron approached, accompanied by two pretty daughters or nieces. Murray was open in her hand at “Burial-ground—English.”
“Ah, Shelley!” she cooed in the deep chest-voice affected by her class, screwing her eye-glass well in place before bringing it to bear upon the horizontal slab. “The poet and infidel, Shelley, me dears! A man of some note in his day. I went to school with his sister, I remember. Quite a nice girl, too, I assure you. Poor Shelley! it was a pity he imbibed such very-very sad notions upon certain subjects, for he really was not without ability!”
The fancy of how the wayward genius would have listened to these comments above a poet’s grave would have provoked a smile from melancholy itself.
In another quarter of the cemetery rests the mortal part of one whom we knew for ourselves, to have been a good man and a useful. Rev. N. C. Burt, formerly a Baltimore pastor, died in Rome, whither he had come for health, and sleeps under heartsease and violets that are never blighted by winter.