Pyramid of Cestius an essential sight for many who undertook the Grand Tour in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was much admired by architects, becoming the primary model for pyramids built in the West during this period. Percy Bysshe Shelley described it as "one keen pyramid with wedge sublime" in "Adonaïs", his 1821 elegy for John Keats. In turn the English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy saw the pyramid during a visit to the nearby Protestant Cemetery in 1887 and was inspired to write a poem, "Rome: At the Pyramid of Cestius near the Graves of Shelley and Keats", in which he
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady "Elegy's" effective phrasing is often remembered and quoted. Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" is a poem in heroic couplets by Alexander Pope, first published in his "Works" of 1717. Though only 82 lines long, it has become one of Pope's most celebrated pieces. The work begins with the poet asking what ghost beckons him onward with its "bleeding bosom gor'd"; it is the spirit of an unnamed woman (the "lady" of the title) who acted "a "Roman's" part" (i.e., committed suicide) due to loving "too well." The speaker eulogizes