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 Written in a Country Churchyard verbal parallels, chose similar backgrounds to signal their parentage. One favourite theme was a meditation among ruins, such as John Langhorne's “Written among the ruins of Pontefract Castle” (1756), Edward Moore’s “An elegy, written among the ruins of a nobleman's seat in Cornwall” (1756) and John Cunningham’s “An elegy on a pile of ruins" (1761). Gray's friend William Mason chose an actual churchyard in South Wales for his “Elegy VI” (1787), adding a reference to the poet in the text. He also provided a final note explaining that the poem was written “to make it appear a day scene, and