Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1906 — Keats’ Epitaph. [ARTICLE]

Keats’ Epitaph.

Shortly before his death Keats left strict injunctions that his headstone should bear these words: Here lies one whose name was writ in water. For nearly forty years a simple gravestone bearing these words marked the spot where Keats lay—the graveyard of the English church in Rome—but in 1859 Joseph Severn, w hose hand Keats held when he died, wrote to Mr. Dilke, father of the present Sir Charles Dilke, suggesting the following epitaph, which was subsequently adopted: This grave contains the mortal remains of John Keats, A Young English Poet, who died at Rome, Feb. 20, 1820, aged 23 years. His short life was so embittered by discouragement and sickness that he desired these words to mark his grave: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Time having reversed this sentence, his friends and admirers now Inscribe his name in Marble 1859.