"It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place”
- Shelley, not long before he drowned and was buried here.
A peaceful visit to Keats and Shelley’s graves at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.
“At times during his last days he made me go to see the place where he was to be buried, and he expressed pleasure at any description of the locality of the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius, about the grass and the many flowers, particularly the innumerable violets, also about a flock of goats and sheep and a young shepherd–all these intensely interested him. Violets were his favourite flowers, and he joyed to hear how they overspread the graves. He assured me ‘that he already seemed to feel the flowers growing over him.”
- Joseph Severn, a friend and companion who nursed Keats devotedly in his dying days. On the picture above you can see wild violets growing over his grave.