Ah, what avails the sceptred race,
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine!
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.
One curious task which I set myself in Calcutta was to find Rose
Aylmer's grave, for it was there that, in 1800, the mortal part of the
lady whom Landor immortalised was buried. But I tried in vain. I walked
for hours amid the sombre pyramidal tombs beneath which the Calcutta
English used to be laid, among them, in 1815, Thackeray's father, but I
found no trace of her whom I sought. I have seen many famous cemeteries,
all depressing, from Kensal Green to Genoa, from Rock Creek to
Montmartre, but none can approach in its forlorn melancholy the tract of
stained and crumbling sarcophagi packed so close as almost to touch each
other, in the burial ground off Rawdon Street and Park Street. Let no
one establish a monument of cement over me. Any material rather than
that!