Summary
Wilde opens with the marble pyramid by the Porta San Paolo, older-looking than Rome itself, which the Middle Ages took for the tomb of Remus but which belongs to Caius Cestius, a Roman of small note who died about 30 B.C. Its shadow falls at evening on the Old Protestant Cemetery, and there on a green slope is a common-looking grave whose inscription ends 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'. It is the grave of John Keats.
Wilde quotes Lord Houghton and Shelley on the beauty of the place, and, seeing violets, daisies and poppies over the tomb, recalls Keats saying that his greatest pleasure was watching flowers grow, and murmuring 'I feel the flowers growing over me.' He finds the stone a poor memorial in a city where popes and cardinals lie in porphyry and jasper, though the site is noble: the grey pyramid behind, Monte Testaccio in front, and cypresses marking where Shelley's heart lies.
Standing by the grave, Wilde thinks of Keats as a Priest of Beauty slain before his time and recalls Guido's St. Sebastian, which he saw at Genoa: a lovely boy bound to a tree and pierced by arrows, gazing up at heaven. His thoughts take shape as a sonnet. The youngest of the martyrs lies 'Fair as Sebastian and as foully slain', under daisies and poppies rather than cypress or yew, and though his name was writ in water, tears will keep his memory green.