On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

Author: John Keats  | Date: 1817

ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES

My spirit is too weak- mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep

Of godlike hardship tells me I must die

Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep

That I have not the cloudy winds to keep

Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.

Such dim-conceived glories of the brain

Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;

So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,

That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude

Wasting of old Time- with a billowy main-

A sun- a shadow of a magnitude.

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Chicago: John Keats, On Seeing the Elgin Marbles Original Sources, accessed March 28, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=Y1RA3SF6NWGWDXS.

MLA: Keats, John. On Seeing the Elgin Marbles, Original Sources. 28 Mar. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=Y1RA3SF6NWGWDXS.

Harvard: Keats, J, On Seeing the Elgin Marbles. Original Sources, retrieved 28 March 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=Y1RA3SF6NWGWDXS.