ROME FLOWER MARKET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14835, 11 November 1911, Page 5 (Supplement)

ROME FLOWER MARKET.

The mast: beautiful street scene in Roma is, says Great Thoughts, the flower mar ket, surely one of those peeps "of; romance and splashes of colour which we may not see many times in a life, and not in many places _in the world. Coming up that narrow street, the Via Condotti, one's eye is caught by a blaze of red, blue, crimson, and yellow, which seems to form a wall in front. At the corner we turn into the Piazza de Spagna, and opposite to . us: rises a wide flight of stairs. The lower steps are completely covered by and hidden in masses of fresh and beautiful flowers. Bunch upon bunch of iris, ■ freesias, fragrant stocks, blue forget-me-nots, clusters ■of big violets, cheer and scent the people as they pass. Up and down the Scala do Spagna, one passes 'as though in a triumphal procession, between flowers which surely never wither, because at dawn or dark they are always there, climbing up towards the church above.

: This is a historic corner, fraught with memories of more than one life. Beside the flower-strewn steps stands a tall house with narrow windows, which look upon the flowers, and up towards the Church dei Monta and the ilex trees. Nearly a hundred years ago the poet Keats laid down his tired suffering life ' here, , worn out with his own genius, his constant pain, and his love. Watched by his friend Severn, and with the spring flowers about him, he died here on a February day, but a few months after lie came to Italy as ,a last resource to save his life. It was here that he asked for these, words to be written upon his grave:"Here lies one whoso name was writ in water." and few English people come to Rome without standing reverently beside it under the cypresses. Until recent days these famous ? steps of the flower market were the resort of models, and charming Italian maids,, picturesque old men,: and handsome : boysj waited here to bo engaged by. the artists who throng to Home. Many a famous, face was once familiar . here, for like all the streets of Rome, it' is full of ghosts who have surely left behind ' something more than shadowy recollections. Shelley enc-e walked ■ here. Story, the sculptor, with Robert ' Browning, once knew the old piazza better than they knew Piccadilly. In the sunshine. of Roman streets Ibsen wrote his first • success, Hawthorne lived and studied, Byron I. wandered at; his own l eccentric will.: