Keats' Tombstone

Image of Keats' tombstone from http://englishhistory.net/keats/grave.html
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"Here lies one whose name was writ on water."

This was the inscription that John Keats, who died at age 26 of tuberculosis, asked to have written on his tombstone--no name, just a line of verse prophesying what he thought would be his own pending anonymity. There is a historical irony here--that the verse in stone would prove part of the poetic apparatus that ultimately insured his name was not written merely on water.

Though not a line of strict iambic pentameter, there are a lot of consecutive iambs in this inscription--after the initial stressed syllable, four of them in a row. Instead of the initial iamb, we have a single, short, dramatically stressed syllable--"Here"--a declarative and fittingly pronounced beginning. The rhythm proceeds in iambs till the end, when we check a final unstressed note at the end of "water." Thus we have a ten syllable line, a stress followed by four iambs and ending abruptly with a syllable that is so weak that it simply seems to disappear. The effect of the final unstressed syllable is to stretch out the line a little and to provide a different tone at the end by hinting at the unstated, at implications, instead of offering certainty. The verse begins with emphasis and lingers at the end, pondering and thoughtful, trailing off into speculation and denying the sense of dramatic conclusion that we might expect at the end of such an important line as an epitaph. Even the first syllable of "water," where we expect something with significant declamatory power, is not stressed so heavily as we think it should be, certainly not as much as the other stressed syllables in the line, and that is part of the effect as well. To further emphasize the weakness of the ending, consider an alternative statement: "Here lies one whose name was writ in stone." "Stone" has a powerful finality to it that fits with the intended meaning. The way Keats has it, though, the ending invites us to meditate upon the legacy of his work.

He was a poet to the very end.