John Keats died in Rome in 1821. He wished to be interred under a tombstone bearing only the words, ‘Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.’ His friends, Severn and Brown erected the stone, but added a relief of a lyre with broken strings and expanded the epigraph.
‘This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821’
The final words are said to echo a couplet from Catullus: ‘What a woman says to a passionate lover / should be written in the wind and the running water.’
Photo: Venice, August 2007