Читать книгу Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations онлайн

93 страница из 97

‘Oh, who shall lightly say that fame

Is nothing but an empty name?

When but for those, our gifted dead,

All ages past a blank would be,

Sunk in oblivion’s murky bed.’

It is only fitting that she, who sang thus in her ‘Metrical Legends of Exalted Character,’ should in her village grave illustrate the sentiment of these lines.

If we follow the east path to the end, and keep in the one under the south-east wall, the second tomb is that of John Constable, R.A. He rests beside his beloved partner, Maria Elizabeth Bicknell, and one or more of their children. He died in London, March 31, 1837.

A little further on, under the same sheltering wall, lies a flat stone inscribed, ‘Sacred to the Memory of Maria Honey, whose mortal remains repose in the vault beneath. She died in the year of our Lord 1843, in the 27th year of her age.’

Some of our readers remember the brilliant, graceful actress, and thus can feel the pathetic force of the brief lines inscribed beneath:

‘Shall I remain forgotten in the dust,