Florence: The English Cemetery
Not
the place for a
photograph:
best to settle
Instead for a well-picked phrase,
just to maintain
That all is as the guide book said.
A plain
Truth, like the camera, can only
lie a little.
Here,
even the light
stagnates in
the iron angles
Of railings and even the marble
stains
Less easily than the memory. A
soft rain's
Tingle is sharper than all their
lives' titles.
Greek Epitaphs for Tombs in
Florence's Swiss-Owned 'English' Cemetery
|
I, wife to Mr Browning, mother to Pen, I, Hiram, of Vermont and Cincinnatti, I, Nadezhda De Santis, came I, Elizabeth Shinner, maid I am Theodore Parker, I, Maurice Baruch, I, James Lorimer Graham, I am Isa, friend to Browning, John Sinclair of Edinburgh I am William Somerville. My I am Louisa Adams Kuhn. |
Southwood Smith, doctor, am
I, who worked against employing, abusing, children in mines and factories. Read my epitaph by Leigh Hunt. I could not face celibacy, I could not face marriage. Arthur Hugh Clough am I, beneath Champollion's winged globe. I, Henry Savage Landor, journey Everywhere, then die where I was born. I, Robert Davidsohn, write Florence's history out from her archives. Read my books to understand Dante. I am Theodosia Garrow Trollope. My mother Hebrew, my father the son of an Indian princess, my daughter Bice. I, Walter Savage Landor, wrote many quatrains for my tomb. Instead, Algernon Swinburne's epitaph is on it. I, Giampietro Vieusseux, work for Florentine freedom, but do not let women enter my reading room. I am Major William Sewell, son of a king, friend to a fellow soldier, husband of Georgina. I stepped out of Jane Austen's pages, came to Florence to die in childbirth. Sarah MacCalmont is my name. My husband paints me, sculpts my tomb, my son Benoni lives, I am Fanny Holman Hunt. JBH |
