John Keats

Here you will find thePoemOn Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Timeof poet John Keats

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time

My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined 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 indescribable 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.