“In so sweet a spot!” We said it aloud, in gathering for his wife a cluster of white violets growing above his heart.
Death and the grave cannot be made less fearful than in this garden of the blest:—
“Where, like an infant’s smile, over the dead,
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.”
Keats is buried in the old cemetery, of which the new is an adjunct. It is bounded at the back by the Aurelian wall; on two sides, by a dry moat, and the fourth by the pyramid of Cestius. An arched bridge crosses the narrow moat, and the gate is kept locked. On the side of the arch next his grave is a profile head of Keats in basso-relievo; beneath it, this acrostic—
“Keats! if thy cherished name be ‘writ in water,’
Each drop has fallen from some mourner’s cheek,—
A sacred tribute, such as heroes seek,
‘Though oft in vain—for dazzling deeds of slaughter.
Sleep on! Not honored less for epitaph so meek!”