Rome - At The Pyramid Of Cestius - Near The Graves Of Shelley And Keats

Who, then, was Cestius,      And what is he to me? -     Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous      One thought alone brings he.      I can recall no word      Of anything he did;     For me he is a man who died and was interred      To leave a pyramid      Whose purpose was exprest      Not with its first design,     Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest      Two countrymen of mine.      Cestius in life, maybe,      Slew, breathed out threatening;     I know not. This I know: in death all silently      He does a kindlier thing,      In beckoning pilgrim feet      With marble finger high     To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,      Those matchless singers lie . . .      - Say, then, he lived and died      That stones which bear his name     Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;      It is an ample fame.