Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/207



died at half-past four in the morning of June 29th, 1861, in the fifty-third year of her age. She died of congestion of the lungs; and from the shattered condition of her lungs the physicians asserted that her existence could not have been prolonged, in any circumstance, many months.

From the grief of those dearest to her the veil may not be rudely torn. Suffice to say that on the evening of July 1st all that remained of England's great poetess was reverently borne to the lovely little Protestant cemetery, looking out towards Fiesole. The bier was surrounded by a sympathetic band of English, Americans, and Italians, whose intense sorrow dared hardly display itself in presence of the holy grief of the husband and the son of her whom they had loved so well.

There, amid the dust of illustrious fellow poets, and where tall cypresses wave over the graves, and the beautiful hills keep guard around, rises a stately marble cenotaph, designed by Sir Frederick Leighton, to the memory of the authoress of Aurora Leigh. Owing, however, to the removal of the old city walls