In a faulty
perspective of memory, I had always seen the graves of the two poets
side by side; but the heart of Shelley rests in a prouder part of the
cemetery, where the paths between the finer tombs are carefully kept;
and the dust of Keats lies in an old, plain, almost neglected corner,
well off beyond a dividing trench. It seems an ungracious chance which
has so parted the two poets so inextricably united in their fame; it is
as if here, too, the world would have its way; but, of course, it is
only at the worst an ungracious chance. Keats, at least, has the
companionship of the painter Severn, the friend on whose "fond breast
his parting soul relied," and who has here followed him into the dust.
A few withered daisies had been scattered in the thin grass over the
poet, and one hardly dared lift one's eyes from them to the
heartbreaking epitaph which one could not spell for tears.
VIII
A FEW VILLAS
It was but a few minutes' walk from the hotel to the Porta Pinciana,
and, if you took this short walk, you found yourself almost before you
knew it in the Villa Borghese.
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