Old Spanish steps

For Lina Scarborough

                                    Some steal their first kisses beneath old leafy oaks
                                    Others on playgrounds, in Ferris wheels and boats

                                    But I’d like to kiss you on the old Spanish steps

                                    The lights are going out in the city of Rome

                                    But spend a moment with me before you go home

                                    Because you drown out the world, and all of its cares

                                    When you tell me you love me on the old Spanish stairs

                                    And though old steps wear with the passage of time

                                    I rejoice anew when your hand reaches for mine

                                    So let’s not trade one moment for the next

                                    Nor be ungrateful; lest we forget to pay our respects

                                    To all who have climbed on these old Spanish steps

Of the many beautiful places to visit in Rome, one of my absolute favourites are the Spanish steps, an eighteenth-century marble staircase which take you from the Piazza di Spagna up to the former Spanish embassy overlooking the inner city. From there one can make out the domes of St. Peter’s and the Basilica San Carlo al Corso in the distance, and a steady flow of people traverse the steps during the day to take in the view. At night the entire city lights up beneath the steps, and the view is simply stunning. On weekends, people occasionally stop to take wedding portraits, like the newlyweds whose pictures I snapped in the piazza.

Although many visitors are unaware of it, the Spanish steps also have a close association with a famous Romantic poet: to the right of the steps stands the former apartment where the poet John Keats first took residence in 1820. The young poet had moved from London to Rome at the advice of his doctors, in the hope that the warmer climate would help him recover from the tuberculosis he was suffering from. Keats unfortunately never overcame the disease and was cared for until the end by his friend the artist Joseph Severn, next to whom he is buried in the Cimitero degli Inglesi. Although only twenty-five when he died, in his short life the poet had completed a lively collection of poetry with a talent well beyond his years. 

Today the old apartment houses the Keats-Shelley museum, in memory of Keats and his fellow Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who also lived in Italy at the time. Shelley himself died tragically only a year later under mysterious circumstances, his body being found washed ashore on a beach in Tuscany. He was later identified by the copy of Keats’ poems he still carried in his pocket. Despite the somewhat limited attention Shelley had and Keats’ poetry received during their own lifetimes (Keats lamenting that If I had had time I would have made myself remember’d), both Keats’ and Shelly’s poems have endeared themselves to successive generations, and with time they have become the much-loved poets they are today.  

- Matthew Edward Scarborough

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